The government is to expand radiation testing of fish caught near Taiwan, it said on Wednesday, after Tokyo this week announced plans to release more than 1 million tonnes of treated water from the Fukushima Dai-ichi nuclear power plant into the ocean.
At a cross-ministerial meeting, Fisheries Agency Director-General Chang Chih-sheng (張致盛) said that government agencies have worked to monitor food safety since the plant was crippled after going into meltdown following an earthquake and tsunami in 2011.
Since then, fish caught near Taiwan and in the northwestern Pacific Ocean have been tested for cesium-134 and cesium-137, he said.
As of March 31, the agency had collected 2,212 samples, including 1,652 near-shore fish, and 560 open-sea fish, all of which met existing standards, he said.
In preparation for Japan’s release of treated water in several years, government agencies would expand existing testing on sea products and increase sample sizes, Chang said.
As a result, the number of fish samples tested is to increase from 208 to 500 per year, he said.
The number of monitoring sites would also be expanded from 20 to 62, with tests conducted year-round instead of only in the summer and winter, he added.
The government would seek compensation from Japan if the treated water is determined to have negatively affected Taiwan’s fishing grounds, Council of Agriculture Minister Chen Chi-chung (陳吉仲) said.
A group of Taiwanese-American and Tibetan-American students at Harvard University on Saturday disrupted Chinese Ambassador to the US Xie Feng’s (謝鋒) speech at the school, accusing him of being responsible for numerous human rights violations. Four students — two Taiwanese Americans and two from Tibet — held up banners inside a conference hall where Xie was delivering a speech at the opening ceremony of the Harvard Kennedy School China Conference 2024. In a video clip provided by the Coalition of Students Resisting the CCP (Chinese Communist Party), Taiwanese-American Cosette Wu (吳亭樺) and Tibetan-American Tsering Yangchen are seen holding banners that together read:
UNAWARE: Many people sit for long hours every day and eat unhealthy foods, putting them at greater risk of developing one of the ‘three highs,’ an expert said More than 30 percent of adults aged 40 or older who underwent a government-funded health exam were unaware they had at least one of the “three highs” — high blood pressure, high blood lipids or high blood sugar, the Health Promotion Administration (HPA) said yesterday. Among adults aged 40 or older who said they did not have any of the “three highs” before taking the health exam, more than 30 percent were found to have at least one of them, Adult Preventive Health Examination Service data from 2022 showed. People with long-term medical conditions such as hypertension or diabetes usually do not
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Heat advisories were in effect for nine administrative regions yesterday afternoon as warm southwesterly winds pushed temperatures above 38°C in parts of southern Taiwan, the Central Weather Administration (CWA) said. As of 3:30pm yesterday, Tainan’s Yujing District (玉井) had recorded the day’s highest temperature of 39.7°C, though the measurement will not be included in Taiwan’s official heat records since Yujing is an automatic rather than manually operated weather station, the CWA said. Highs recorded in other areas were 38.7°C in Kaohsiung’s Neimen District (內門), 38.2°C in Chiayi City and 38.1°C in Pingtung’s Sandimen Township (三地門), CWA data showed. The spell of scorching