A banquet hall in New Taipei City’s Sinjhuang District (新莊) has been ordered to suspend operations amid an investigation into a suspected food poisoning outbreak affecting 62 people, the city’s health department said yesterday.
The New Taipei City Department of Health said it received reports on Sunday of people experiencing an upset stomach after attending banquets held by Watson’s Personal Care Stores (Taiwan) Co at Gala De Chine Xinzhuang Crystal Crown Plaza (雲品集團新莊晶冠館) on Tuesday and Wednesday last week.
Watson’s Taiwan, the nation’s largest cosmetics and drugstore operator, told the health department that 62 of the 2,201 people who attended the banquets last week reported having an upset stomach.
Photo: CNA
Although nine of them sought medical treatment, none were hospitalized, and their symptoms subsided, the department said, adding that it immediately sent inspectors to the banquet hall upon receiving the report.
On Sunday, health department officials inspected the restaurant based on the Regulations on Good Hygiene Practice for Food (食品良好衛生規範準則), and on Monday afternoon it ordered the banquet hall to shut temporarily, as the number of people who reported suspected food poisoning met its threshold to halt operations, it said.
The inspection found contraventions including unclean floors in its kitchen washing area and trash cans without lids, it said, adding that it asked the venue to improve within a set period.
No leftovers from the dishes served during the banquets last week were available for testing, the department said.
However, a dish called “hand-grasp seafood plate,” which includes a variety of seafood, German sausages and vegetables, as well as ice cubes could have posed a high risk of contamination, so samples of those ingredients were collected for testing, it said.
If the restaurant fails a second inspection, it can be fined NT$60,000 to NT$200 million (US$1,871 to US$6.24 million), and if pathogens exceeding the maximum allowable limits are found in the tests, it can be fined NT$30,000 to NT$3 million, under the Act Governing Food Safety and Sanitation (食品安全衛生管理法).
China has reserved offshore airspace in the Yellow Sea and East China Sea from March 27 to May 6, issuing alerts usually used to warn of military exercises, although no such exercises have been announced, the Wall Street Journal (WSJ) reported yesterday. Reserving such a large area for 40 days without explanation is an “unusual step,” as military exercises normally only last a few days, the paper said. These alerts, known as Notice to Air Missions (Notams), “are intended to inform pilots and aviation authorities of temporary airspace hazards or restrictions,” the article said. The airspace reserved in the alert is
NAMING SPAT: The foreign ministry called on Denmark to propose an acceptable solution to the erroneous nationality used for Taiwanese on residence permits Taiwan has revoked some privileges for Danish diplomatic staff over a Danish permit that lists “Taiwan” as “China,” Eric Huang (黃鈞耀), head of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs’ Department of European Affairs, told a news conference in Taipei yesterday. Reporters asked Huang whether the Danish government had responded to the ministry’s request that it correct the nationality on Danish residence permits of Taiwanese, which has been listed as “China” since 2024. Taiwan’s representative office in Denmark continues to communicate with the Danish government, and the ministry has revoked some privileges previously granted to Danish representatives in Taiwan and would continue to review
More than 6,000 Taiwanese students have participated in exchange programs in China over the past two years, despite the Mainland Affairs Council’s (MAC) “orange light” travel advisory, government records showed. The MAC’s publicly available registry showed that Taiwanese college and university students who went on exchange programs across the Strait numbered 3,592 and 2,966 people respectively. The National Immigration Agency data revealed that 2,296 and 2,551 Chinese students visited Taiwan for study in the same two years. A review of the Web sites of publicly-run universities and colleges showed that Taiwanese higher education institutions continued to recruit students for Chinese educational programs without
A bipartisan group of US senators has introduced a bill to enhance cooperation with Taiwan on drone development and to reduce reliance on supply chains linked to China. The proposed Blue Skies for Taiwan Act of 2026 was introduced by Republican US senators Ted Cruz and John Curtis, and Democratic US senators Jeff Merkley and Andy Kim. The legislation seeks to ease constraints on Taiwan-US cooperation in uncrewed aerial systems (UAS), including dependence on China-sourced components, limited access to capital and regulatory barriers under US export controls, a news release issued by Cruz on Wednesday said. The bill would establish a "Blue UAS
RSS