■Diplomacy
HK pullout recommended
The TSU will propose that the government dissolve its liaison office in Hong Kong and recall all related personnel in a bid to protect the interests of Taiwan and its people, a TSU official said yesterday. Lee Hsien-jen (李先仁), director of the TSU's policy research committee, said the TSU legislative caucus will propose at a cross-party consultative meeting that the government heighten its alert against the likely passage of anti-subversion legislation in Hong Kong, which he said will put Taiwanese liaison personnel stationed there in a "risky situation." Risks of the liaison officials being purged by the Chinese communists in the name of subversion will escalate once the controversial Article 23 legislation is passed, Lee said.
■ Politics
Weng meets lawmakers
Judicial Yuan President Weng Yueh-sheng (翁岳生) yesterday said that he is satisfied with the Council of Grand Justices' work and reiterated that politics should not interfere with justice. Weng made his remarks yesterday morning during a meeting with nine PFP lawmakers. Weng said that it is very important for a grand justice to be independent and neutral. No politics should be involved in any judicial issues or requests for interpretation to the Constitution, he said, adding that the incumbent justices have been doing a great job regarding the rules.
■ Crime
Squid found with heroin
Investigators have arrested four people suspected of being involved in the importation of nearly 1kg of heroin brought into the country in shipments of frozen fish, Investigation Bureau officials said yesterday. Acting on a tip-off, the investigators discovered the chief suspect, a man in his 50s who owns a refrigeration plant in Nanliao, Hsinchu County, had imported a large amount of squid from Thailand, via Kaohsiung Harbor. The investigators raided the man's factory after the frozen squid were sent there. The officers found the squid had been packed with heroin.
■ Fishing
Ships bound for N Pacific
The Coast Guard Administration said yesterday that it will send two patrol ships to the North Pacific to police the area with the onset of the fishing season there. the Hsunhu No. 1 and Hsunhu No. 2 will embark from Kaohsiung Harbor within the next few days, coast guard officials said. In line with maritime resources and ecology protection policies adopted by major world fishery organizations, the officials said, the coast guard has joined forces with the Council of Agriculture and deployed ships to patrol major overseas fishing grounds to crack down on poaching in recent years.
■ Health
Genetic link for SARS?
People's susceptibility to SARS could be related to the Human Leukocyte Antigen (HLA), Lee Ming-liang (李明亮), chief of the Cabinet's SARS Prevention and Relief Committee, said yesterday. Lee, who is an expert in heredity, said the world's four major Chinese communities -- China, Hong Kong, Taiwan and Singapore -- were gripped by SARS outbreaks, while non-Chinese populations such as South Korea and Malaysia, were unaffected by the epidemic. "The phenomenon leads medical experts to presume that SARS infection might be related to HLA," Lee 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,