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The top story from this past week involved German public broadcaster Deutsche Welle correcting its misrepresentation of comments made by President Ma Ying-joeu. A Deutsche Welle report mistakenly quoted Ma as saying that he is willing to learn from the experience of East and West Germany in their handling of bilateral relations while moving toward eventual unification in 1990.
In the corrected version of the report, updated on Thursday, Deutsche Welle added a note to clarify that what Ma said in the interview was that he is willing to learn from the experience of East Germany and West Germany in the handling of their relations.
The Presidential Office said on Thursday that during the interview, President Ma made it clear that cross-strait relations are different from relations between the two Germanys, meaning that Taiwan cannot emulate the German model in cross-strait relations.
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Also this past week, Legislative President Wang Jin-pyng secured a second victory in his legal battle with the ruling Kuomintang (KMT) over his party membership.
The Taiwan High Court decided on Friday that it will uphold an earlier decision by a district court that Wang still holds KMT membership.
Wang took the party to court in September last year after the KMT's disciplinary committee revoked his membership. Loss of party membership would mean that Wang could no longer serve as an at-large lawmaker or president of the legislature. The KMT filed an appeal soon after the Taipei District Court ruled in favor of Wang in March.
In its ruling on Friday, the Taipei District Court said that a political party cannot allow an internal committee which does not fully represent the opinion of party members to deprive someone of his or her membership.
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And finally this past week the Cabinet finalized a draft amendment that will set stricter food safety regulations. The proposed revisions passed on Thursday will increase the penalties for food safety offenders to up to seven years in prison and fines of up to NT$80 million (US$2.65 million).
Under the revisions, people convicted of lacing food with banned materials or falsified ingredients will also face a maximum seven-year prison sentence, up from the current maximum sentence of five years. In the case of a food safety violation causing a fatality, the offender could be sentenced to life in prison with a fine of up to NT$200 million (US$6.67 million). That’s 10 times higher than before. The new law will not be retroactively applied to previous offenses. But violators will no longer be able to invoke double jeopardy protection.
The government has been pressured to amend food safety regulations following the recent scandal in which cooking oil recycled from kitchen waste was found in many food products.
The draft amendment will be submitted to the legislature for approval.