■ Education
Chen backs foreign teachers
President Chen Shui-bian (陳水扁) yesterday gave his support to a government plan to hire foreigners to teach English in schools. In his Internet newsletter, Chen said that English is the universal language. "If we can hire foreigners to help teach English, it will raise the English level of primary and secondary school students and all students will speak English instead of memorizing words and grammar," he said. "Hiring foreign English teachers can help Taiwan link up with the world." Chen was respond-ing to an e-mailed complaint that foreign English-language teachers in private schools are paid more than Taiwanese teachers. "As for foreign teachers' salary, the government will make pro-per arrangements," he said.
■ Security
Gas masks for Gulf region
The government is sending 300 gas masks to the Persian Gulf region to protect Tai-wanese there if there is a war in Iraq, an official said yes-terday. Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Katherine Chang (張小月) said there were 3,000 Taiwanese in the region registered with the governmnt, but none in Iraq. She said the ministry has sent the masks to its trade offices in the Gulf area. ``Those registered with the Taiwanese offices will receive the masks free of charge,'' she said. The government is also sending protective clothing against chemical and biological warfare to its offices in Kuwait and Israel, she said.
■ Politics
Lee school to open in March
Top academics and experts are expected to give lectures at the Lee Teng-hui School, which is scheduled to begin offering classes for aspiring political and economic leaders at the end of March. The workshop's classes will be offered on weekends and the course will last about a month. The workshop plans to invite a variety of speakers, including Nat Bellocchi, former chairman of the American Institute in Taiwan, former chairman of the Council for Economic Planning and Development Chen Po-chih (陳博志), former finance minister Shirley Kuo (郭婉容) and writer Chen Fang-ming (陳芳明). Entry requirements for the workshop's 30 students are high -- they are required to have made distinguished contributions to society or academia.
■ Cross-strait ties
Sovereignity is bottom line
The government's bottom line in its cross-strait policy is an insistence on sovereign status, a Mainland Affairs Council official said in Johannesburg on Wednes-day. Addressing a meeting of senior executives of major overseas Chinese trade associations from around the world, Council Vice Chair-man Chen Ming-tong (陳明通) said the top goal of the government's China policy is to maintain a peaceful and stable environment for cross-strait engagement. "And the bottom line in cross-strait relations is that the ROC is a sovereign state, and this can never be compromised," he said.
■ Diplomacy
Honduras thanks Taiwan
Ambassador Olmeda Rivera, secretary general of the Honduran Foreign Ministry, said in Geneva on Wednes-day that Taiwan has donated US$294,000 to help clear land mines from her country. She said that great efforts have been made to clear land mines from many countries since the 1997 Treaty to Ban Anti-personnel Land Mines. Taiwan has donated nearly US$300,000 to help remove mines from the border area between Honduras and Guatemala.
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
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,
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