■ Religion
Tooth to get new home
One of Taiwan's largest Buddhist organizations broke ground in Kaohsiung County yesterday on a huge museum to house a relic believed to be one of the Buddha's teeth. Thousands of Buddhist faithful prayed and prostrated themselves to the strains of solemn music as the relic, protected in a golden case, was brought in a sedan chair to the venue of the planned museum next to the Fokuangshan Monastery. Master Hsing Yun (星雲), the abbot of Fokuangshan Monastery, presided over the ceremony attended by dozens of politicians. The museum complex will occupy 50 hectares with the main building standing some 130m tall. A center square will have capacity for up to 100,000 people, the monastery said. The museum is set to open within three years.
■ Arts and culture
Awards face budget cut
The country may have to cancel the 40-year-old Golden Horse Award film festival this year, officials said yesterday. The legislature has passed the second reading of a motion brought by 13 TSU legislators to cut the NT$15 million budget for the festival to be held later this year. The third and the final reading of the motion is expected to be passed soon. Angered by the organizer's refusal to allow President Chen Shui-bian (陳水扁) to speak during the award ceremony last year, the TSU sought to have the entire budget axed, despite an explanation for the move by Wang Ying-hsiang (王曉祥), chairman of the Taiwan Movies Industry Foundation. "We were just following the previous practice of not inviting political leaders to speak on the stage as the event is designed for movie business people," Wang said.
■ Justice
Court to rule on retrial
The nation's high court is to rule today in a retrial of three young men who have spent 12 years in jail for allegedly killing a couple. The families of the three, Su Chien-ho (蘇建和), Chuang Lin-hsun (莊林勳) and Liu Bin-lang (劉秉郎), continued to maintain their sons' innocence while awaiting the ruling that human rights groups have said will be the standard against which the nation's progress in human rights will be measured. The three were convicted and sentenced to death but have continued to protest their innocence, insisting they had been forced into confessing by police. The case of the Hsichih Trio, named after the city where the crime took place, has been controversial from the beginning. On March 24, 1991, a husband and wife were murdered at their home. The three suspects were soon implicated by another man who was subsequently executed for the crime. Human rights groups charge no physical evidence has ever linked the three to the murder.
■ Labor
CLA looks to limit foreigners
The Council of Labor Affairs (CLA) plans to ban wealthy families from employing foreign caretakers and offer subsidies to families that are willing to hire local housemaids or caretakers, a senior official said yesterday. CLA Chairwoman Chen Chu (陳菊) made the remark at a panel session of a two-day seminar on administrative reform organized by the DPP. Many participants at the seminar urged the government to curtail the employment of foreign laborers in an effort to lower the unemployment rate, Chu said. Taiwan brought in 6,000 foreign laborers in 1992 and the number of legal alien workers now stands at 317,000. Chen said a complete ban would be difficult as local workers have little interest in working in certain fields.
Agencies
The Taipei Department of Health yesterday said it has launched a probe into a restaurant at Far Eastern Sogo Xinyi A13 Department Store after a customer died of suspected food poisoning. A preliminary investigation on Sunday found missing employee health status reports and unsanitary kitchen utensils at Polam Kopitiam (寶林茶室) in the department store’s basement food court, the department said. No direct relationship between the food poisoning death and the restaurant was established, as no food from the day of the incident was available for testing and no other customers had reported health complaints, it said, adding that the investigation is ongoing. Later
REVENGE TRAVEL: A surge in ticket prices should ease this year, but inflation would likely keep tickets at a higher price than before the pandemic Scoot is to offer six additional flights between Singapore and Northeast Asia, with all routes transiting Taipei from April 1, as the budget airline continues to resume operations that were paused during the COVID-19 pandemic, a Scoot official said on Thursday. Vice president of sales Lee Yong Sin (李榮新) said at a gathering with reporters in Taipei that the number of flights from Singapore to Japan and South Korea with a stop in Taiwan would increase from 15 to 21 each week. That change means the number of the Singapore-Taiwan-Tokyo flights per week would increase from seven to 12, while Singapore-Taiwan-Seoul
POOR PREPARATION: Cultures can form on food that is out of refrigeration for too long and cooking does not reliably neutralize their toxins, an epidemiologist said Medical professionals yesterday said that suspected food poisoning deaths revolving around a restaurant at Far Eastern Department Store Xinyi A13 Store in Taipei could have been caused by one of several types of bacterium. Ho Mei-shang (何美鄉), an epidemiologist at Academia Sinica’s Institute of Biomedical Sciences, wrote on Facebook that the death of a 39-year-old customer of the restaurant suggests the toxin involved was either “highly potent or present in massive large quantities.” People who ate at the restaurant showed symptoms within hours of consuming the food, suggesting that the poisoning resulted from contamination by a toxin and not infection of the
BAD NEIGHBORS: China took fourth place among countries spreading disinformation, with Hong Kong being used as a hub to spread propaganda, a V-Dem study found Taiwan has been rated as the country most affected by disinformation for the 11th consecutive year in a study by the global research project Varieties of Democracy (V-Dem). The nation continues to be a target of disinformation originating from China, and Hong Kong is increasingly being used as a base from which to disseminate that disinformation, the report said. After Taiwan, Latvia and Palestine ranked second and third respectively, while Nicaragua, North Korea, Venezuela and China, in that order, were the countries that spread the most disinformation, the report said. Each country listed in the report was given a score,