President Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九) proposed setting up a hotline with Beijing yesterday to ensure food safety and public health in Taiwan.
Ma said China’s milk producers should be condemned for making tainted milk powder and that while they were drastic measures, he supported the Executive Yuan’s effort to request compensation from Chinese milk firms and to recall Chinese-made milk powder and vegetable proteins.
“In the long run, the government must have a sound understanding of China’s food safety and consumer protection mechanisms and set up a hotline to obtain information from China,” he told members of the Taiwan Medical Association at the Presidential Office.
Ma said the former Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) administration had allowed the import of milk products from China, but that as a responsible government the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) administration would take up the responsibility of protecting the health of the Taiwanese public.
“I would like to remind civil servants around the country that it is the responsibility of the government to address the public’s concerns,” he said. “We must deal with it, not walk away from it, because it is our duty to protect the public’s health.”
Describing the scandal as “something beyond our control,” Ma said the government must handle the matter calmly and practically.
Meanwhile, Straits Exchange Foundation Secretary-General Kao Kong-lian (高孔廉) said yesterday he had met members of China’s Association for Relations Across the Taiwan Strait to discuss the scandal and other issues.
Kao, who returned from Macau yesterday, said he conveyed Taiwan’s concern over the incident and the hope that China would offer assistance. He also hoped that experts from both sides could work together to tackle the problem.
Taiwanese actress Barbie Hsu (徐熙媛) has died of pneumonia at the age of 48 while on a trip to Japan, where she contracted influenza during the Lunar New Year holiday, her sister confirmed today through an agent. "Our whole family came to Japan for a trip, and my dearest and most kindhearted sister Barbie Hsu died of influenza-induced pneumonia and unfortunately left us," Hsu's sister and talk show hostess Dee Hsu (徐熙娣) said. "I was grateful to be her sister in this life and that we got to care for and spend time with each other. I will always be grateful to
UNITED: The premier said Trump’s tariff comments provided a great opportunity for the private and public sectors to come together to maintain the nation’s chip advantage The government is considering ways to assist the nation’s semiconductor industry or hosting collaborative projects with the private sector after US President Donald Trump threatened to impose a 100 percent tariff on chips exported to the US, Premier Cho Jung-tai (卓榮泰) said yesterday. Trump on Monday told Republican members of the US Congress about plans to impose sweeping tariffs on semiconductors, steel, aluminum, copper and pharmaceuticals “in the very near future.” “It’s time for the United States to return to the system that made us richer and more powerful than ever before,” Trump said at the Republican Issues Conference in Miami, Florida. “They
REMINDER: Of the 6.78 million doses of flu vaccine Taiwan purchased for this flu season, about 200,000 are still available, an official said, following Big S’ death As news broke of the death of Taiwanese actress and singer Barbie Hsu (徐熙媛), also known as Big S (大S), from severe flu complications, the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) and doctors yesterday urged people at high risk to get vaccinated and be alert to signs of severe illness. Hsu’s family yesterday confirmed that the actress died on a family holiday in Japan due to pneumonia during the Lunar New Year holiday. CDC Deputy Director-General Tseng Shu-hui (曾淑慧) told an impromptu news conference that hospital visits for flu-like illnesses from Jan. 19 to Jan. 25 reached 162,352 — the highest
TAIWAN DEFENSE: The initiative would involve integrating various systems in a fast-paced manner through the use of common software to obstruct a Chinese invasion The first tranche of the US Navy’s “Replicator” initiative aimed at obstructing a Chinese invasion of Taiwan would be ready by August, a US Naval Institute (USNI) News report on Tuesday said. The initiative is part of a larger defense strategy for Taiwan, and would involve launching thousands of uncrewed submarines, surface vessels and aerial vehicles around Taiwan to buy the nation and its partners time to assemble a response. The plan was first made public by the Washington Post in June last year, when it cited comments by US Indo-Pacific Commander Admiral Samuel Paparo on the sidelines of the Shangri-La Dialogue
RSS