■ Property rights
Police seize contraband
Police raided a factory in Taipei County and seized more than 200,000 pirated game discs in the largest bust of its kind in Taiwan, the Ministry of Economic Affairs announced yesterday. Police said that the pirated Playstation discs were all Japanese games, which included Spiderman, Pop Music, Shin Sangokumusou, and This is Football, that could have grossed about NT$40 million (US$1.1 million) on the black market. Police arrested Lan Shih-yuan (藍世元), 25, who was guarding the factory, and are now tracking down the major suspect, Wu Chi-wei (吳奇偉). A tip-off lead police to a Taipei County underground factory that was churning out large numbers of pirated game discs. Police raided the factory Wednesday night in Sanchung District.
■ Immigration
Defection fails
Three members of an unidentified Chinese delegation reportedly tried to defect to Taiwan but were captured by police and forced to leave, Taiwan radio said yesterday. The incident occurred last Friday at the Taipei international airport when a Chinese delegation was about to board a Thai International Airways flight back to China, the Broadcasting Corp of China (BCC) said. "Just as the delegation was to board, three members vanished," BCC quoted an airport police official as saying. "The three -- Huang Shuluan, Chen Donghui and Chen Huirong -- dashed out of the airport terminal, jumped into a taxi and told the driver to drive them to Taipei," the official said. "From their accent and their panic, the driver realized they were mainlanders and something was wrong, so he handed them over to airport police," he said.
■ Local activism
Peaceniks deliver message
Ahead of a peace rally tomorrow in Taipei, activists delivered a letter to the director of the American Institute in Taiwan (AIT) Douglas Paal inviting him to meet them. Representatives from various local and expatriate organizations against the proposed US war against Iraq met outside the AIT yesterday to hand over the letter. Around 30 police officers moved on activist Eric Chen (陳炎輝) because he did not hold a permit. Chen was handing out origami "peace cranes." Local coordinator of Citizens of the World, Sean Wratt -- who said he had the support of Labor Human Rights, Peace Times, Taiwan's Green Party and 20 other local groups -- said he was hoping Paal would personally accept a petition bearing the signatures of those against the war that will be collected at the peace rally tomorrow. The gathering is at Ta-an Park in Taipei, from 1:30pm. There will be rock bands, drummers, a play and a signature drive. At 3:30pm the activists will march to the nearby AIT building and hand over the petition urging a peaceful resolution to the Iraq situation.
■ Transportation
Passenger jet spews smoke
Smoke billowed from the tail of a domestic jetliner as it landed with 100 passengers on board. The Far East Air Transport Corp MD-82 developed mechanical problems as it landed at Taitung at around 1:36pm, a Civil Aeronautics Administration official said. Wung Chia-pin, a company official at the airport, told local television that "passengers had complained of smoke and the smell of oil in the passenger cabin." He blamed the oil supply system in the tail of the plane. The company refused to comment on the incident.
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,