DIPLOMACY
Women’s project backed
Taiwan would support a US project called the 2X Women’s Initiative, which is aimed at tackling economic challenges faced by women in developing countries, Representative to the US Hsiao Bi-khim (蕭美琴) said in Washington on Thursday. “Taiwan will support training programs under the 2X initiative, which seeks to advance women’s economic empowerment and nurture the full potential of women as contributors to equitable growth and sustainable development in their communities,” Hsiao said in a release on the Web site of the Taipei Economic and Cultural Representative Office in the US. In a release on the same day, the US International Development Finance Corp said that it welcomed Taiwan’s sponsorship of a new US$350,000 partnership to support women’s entrepreneurship and advance gender-smart investments in developing countries. The 2X Women’s Initiative, part of the White House’s Women’s Global Development and Prosperity Initiative, is run by the corporation, a US federal government development bank that partners with the private sector to finance solutions to major challenges in developing countries.
DIPLOMACY
Milos Vystrcil outlines visit
Czech Senate President Milos Vystrcil on Thursday said that he would lead a delegation to Taiwan this month to promote stronger economic and technological cooperation between the two countries. The leader of the upper house of the Czech parliament said that common values such as freedom, democracy and national sovereignty would be on his agenda when he speaks with Taiwanese politicians. The two countries have followed a similar path in their transition to democracy and he is pleased to “finally get a chance to see the people of Taiwan, who I think have achieved a great success,” Vystrcil said. The delegation is to leave Prague on Aug. 29 on a chartered flight for Taipei, where Vystrcil, business leaders, scientists and other members of the Czech Senate would stay until Sept. 4.
FOOD
Health permit rules unveiled
Food items that have not received health food permits would not be allowed to be billed as “healthy” or a “health food” from July 1, 2022, to avoid confusion, the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) said on Tuesday. In a revised directive about food labels, the FDA said that items without a permit would not be allowed to use the word “healthy” in their names to avoid misleading people into believing that they are certified health food products. Food Safety Division head Lee Wan-chen (李婉媜) said that the FDA took the measure after many people asked about a rising number of food items that are promoted as healthy, but do not bear the FDA’s health food label.
CRIME
Drug arrests increase
Police in Taipei arrested more people on charges related to drug dealing in the first half of this year than in the same period last year, the Taipei City Police Department’s Criminal Investigation Division said on Monday. From January to June 458 people were arrested in Taipei on such charges, up by 67, or 17.14 percent, from a year earlier, police official Sun Fu-tso (孫福佐) said. The increase was not surprising, considering that the number of cases per year has been on the rise, from 758 in 2017 to 832 in 2018 and 894 last year. Dealers often use delivery services to facilitate drug trades, police said, adding that delivery workers had reported suspicious packages they were asked to deliver.
Taiwanese can file complaints with the Tourism Administration to report travel agencies if their activities caused termination of a person’s citizenship, Mainland Affairs Council Minister Chiu Chui-cheng (邱垂正) said yesterday, after a podcaster highlighted a case in which a person’s citizenship was canceled for receiving a single-use Chinese passport to enter Russia. The council is aware of incidents in which people who signed up through Chinese travel agencies for tours of Russia were told they could obtain Russian visas and fast-track border clearance, Chiu told reporters on the sidelines of an event in Taipei. However, the travel agencies actually applied
Japanese footwear brand Onitsuka Tiger today issued a public apology and said it has suspended an employee amid allegations that the staff member discriminated against a Vietnamese customer at its Taipei 101 store. Posting on the social media platform Threads yesterday, a user said that an employee at the store said that “those shoes are very expensive” when her friend, who is a migrant worker from Vietnam, asked for assistance. The employee then ignored her until she asked again, to which she replied: "We don't have a size 37." The post had amassed nearly 26,000 likes and 916 comments as of this
US President Donald Trump said "it’s up to" Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) what China does on Taiwan, but that he would be "very unhappy" with a change in the "status quo," the New York Times said in an interview published yesterday. Xi "considers it to be a part of China, and that’s up to him what he’s going to be doing," Trump told the newspaper on Wednesday. "But I’ve expressed to him that I would be very unhappy if he did that, and I don’t think he’ll do that," he added. "I hope he doesn’t do that." Trump made the comments in
Tourism in Kenting fell to a historic low for the second consecutive year last year, impacting hotels and other local businesses that rely on a steady stream of domestic tourists, the latest data showed. A total of 2.139 million tourists visited Kenting last year, down slightly from 2.14 million in 2024, the data showed. The number of tourists who visited the national park on the Hengchun Peninsula peaked in 2015 at 8.37 million people. That number has been below 2.2 million for two years, although there was a spike in October last year due to multiple long weekends. The occupancy rate for hotels
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