■ Health
Lawmakers push WHA bid
A delegation of legislators across partisan lines is slated to leave tomorrow for a 13-day visit to the Netherlands, the Czech Republic and Poland to push for support for the nation's bid to become an observer at World Health Assembly (WHA). DPP Legislator Lai Ching-te (賴清德) said the trip is aimed at boosting international backing for the bid to for observer status at WHA, the highest-decision making body of the World Health Organization. The delegation includes DPP legislators Parris Chang (張旭成) and Chien Chao-tong (簡肇棟), KMT Legislator Sun Kauo-hwa (孫國華) and TSU Legislator Su Ying-kuei (蘇盈貴). The 56th WHA meeting is slated to take place in Geneva from May 19 to 28.
■ Diplomacy
Navy greeted in Kingstown
A navy flotilla of three warships from Taiwan arrived in St. Vincent on Thursday for a goodwill visit. The flotilla was greeted by Prime Minister Gonsaires Ralph and other officials when it arrived at the harbor of the capital Kingstown. The prime minister praised Taiwan for its economic prosperity and thanked the government for having helped St. Vincent promote the development of education, infrastructure and agricultural technology. He pledged to strongly support Taiwan's bid to join all international organizations, including the World Health Organization. The warships were open to the general public on Thursday and ROC Ambassador Allen Jiang (姜禮尚) and leading officers of the flotilla hosted a reception on one of the ships Thursday evening in honor of 120 government officials and other dignitaries. The flotilla will arrive in Dominica today.
■ Politics
Election rule change sought
DPP Legislator Kuo Jung-tsung (郭榮宗) and TSU Legislator Liao Pen-yen (廖本煙) yesterday announced that they will propose a draft amendment to the Presidential and Vice Presidential Election and Recall Law (總統副總統選罷法) to ban certain family members of a presidential or vice presidential candidate from holding dual nationality. The two lawmakers say some of members of KMT Chairman Lien Chan (連戰) and PFP Chairman James Soong's (宋楚瑜) families have obtained foreign citizenship. "What if an elected president or vice president fled abroad when the cross-strait situation is tense?" the lawmakers asked. According to the draft bill, a person will be eligible to run for president or vice president only if their relations who have a "first-degree kinship" (parents and children) or "second-degree kinship" (brothers, sisters, grandparents and grandchildren) do not hold dual nationality.
■ Children
First lady helps charity
First lady Wu Shu-chen (吳淑珍) paid NT$10,000 for a stuffed "stray goat" toy for her grandson in a charity auction sponsored by the Child Welfare League Foundation yesterday. The foundation is trying to raise NT$30 million for a fund to take care of orphaned children. The foundation has invited the first lady to serve as its first "love ambassador." Wu said that her grandson, Chao Yi-an (趙翊安), is now six months old and has grown teeth. He is the apple of the family's eye, she said. In contrast, pictures of the orphaned children, although cute, show the unfortunate situation of children who have been forsaken by their families, Wu said.
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,