■ Diplomacy
Group to visit Dharmsala
A 12-person delegation of the quasi-official Taiwan-Tibet Exchange Foundation is scheduled to leave for India on Sept. 6 for a nine-day visit to offer the Tibetan government-in-exile medical and agricultural assistance. Foundation deputy secretary general Weng Shih-chieh (翁仕杰) said the delegation will also visit Tibetan communities to conduct field studies and obtain useful health information of the Tibetan people. Vaccination against diseases such as, such as hepatitis B will be made available to children and information about tuberculosis prevention will be handed out. The delegation will also provide the government-in-exile information about agricultural production in preparation for the future dispatch of agricultural demonstration teams.
■ Religion
UN urged to take action
More than 200 local religious leaders and social celebrities met in Taipei yesterday to discuss measures to push the UN to set up an inter-religion council for world peace. The meeting was sponsored by the local chapter of the Interreligious and International Federation for World Peace and the Taipei-based International Culture Foundation. Chairman Huang Shih-cheng (黃石城) said the establishment of such a council under the UN framework will facilitate the world body's work in promoting world peace.He said the UN should do more to protect the younger generation from the scourge of war and that the formation of an inter-religion council would help to achieve this goal. Buddhist Master Ching Hsin (淨心) said religious harmony is yet another "Taiwan miracle" after the country's economic and political miracles.
■ China
Paratroopers move closer
Beijing is planning to set up a combat airborne division closer to Taiwan, a newspaper in Hong Kong reported yesterday. The People's Liberation Army (PLA) is planning to set up a second airborne division, based in Hangzhou, Zhejiang Province, reported the China-backed Wen Wei Po. The paper said the setting up of the new airborne division showed the PLA was focusing part of its strategic force on the Taiwan Strait, as "Taiwan independence seekers continue to challenge the country's sovereignty." The report said the stationing of new paratroopers in Zhejiang could cut by half the amount of time needed to fly troops to Taiwan. China's only airborne base at present is in central Hubei Province. The report said paratroopers could reach Taipei within an hour once the new base is established.
■ Crime
Work rules to be tightened
A government official said yesterday that Taiwan may bar foreigners with criminal records from working on Taiwanese fishing boats, after Indonesian crewmembers on one vessel allegedly killed their three Taiwanese colleagues. The Chan Cheng Tsung disappeared after leaving Guam last month and Indonesian police found it abandoned near Java last week. A search turned up four Indonesian and two Chinese crewmembers on Java, but no sign of the Taiwanese. "Police in Java say the Indonesian crewmembers killed the Taiwanese three days after leaving Guam," said Council of Agriculture Deputy Chairman Lee Jen-chyuan(李健全). "The motive for the killings is still not clear," he said. Lee said that the Indonesians are believed to have thrown the bodies overboard.
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,