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One of the top stories from this past week was the arrival of Typhoon Chan-hom in Taiwan on Friday. The storm brought heavy rain and wind to parts of Taiwan, and officials canceled work and school in Taipei and other parts of northern Taiwan. Many flights were also canceled or delayed.
Chan-hom left Taiwan largely unscathed, with the Central Weather Bureau lifting the sea warning on Saturday morning. However, several people were injured and a security guard fell to his death in suburban Taipei early on Friday when he apparently went out checking on the construction site that he was watching.
Authorities in China evacuated more than a million people from coastal areas in the provinces of Zhejiang and Jiangsu ahead the arrival of Typhoon Chan-hom. Reuters reports that China’s National Meteorological Center is saying that Chan-hom could be “the most powerful July typhoon to hit Zhejiang since 1949.”
Meanwhile, domestic flights were cancelled in South Korea on Sunday as Typhoon Chan-hom brought strong winds and heavy rainfall to southwestern provinces.
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Also this past week, Taiwan’s Food and Drug Administration (FDA) said that 24 local businesses have been fined for importing Japanese food products with falsified place of origin labels.
Taiwan has banned food imports from five Japanese prefectures affected by the Fukushima disaster since 2011. It also requires food imports from Japan to come with proofs of origin and radiation inspection certificates.
Inspectors discovered in March that products were still being imported to Taiwan from the five Japanese provinces, but with falsified labels.
The FDA says that Taiwanese companies cannot shift the blame to Japanese exporters. The health ministry has levied a NT$30,000 (roughly US$1,000) fine for each batch of food imported from Japan with falsified labels. The total amount of fines is estimated at NT$15,390,000 (nearly US$500,000).
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And finally, this past week, in election news, Kuomintang (KMT) presidential hopeful Hung Hsiu-chu held a press conference on Wednesday responding to rumors that she had previously battled breast cancer.
Hung said that she was diagnosed with breast cancer back in March of 2011, and had surgery in April of that year, followed by chemotherapy.
Hung said that during that time, she never once missed an important meeting or event. She went on to become vice president of the legislature in February of the following year. She said she had no plans to drop out of the presidential race.