■ Travel
Alerts to be broadcast
Starting Oct. 1, the Public Television Service will broadcast immediate information about domestic and global travel alerts, the Cabinet's Consumer Protection Commission announced yesterday. "While not many people check travel alert information on the Internet before they set out on their trips, we thought it was a good idea to broadcast it on TV," according to a commission press release. Information will be broadcast irregularly or during the station's Friday news program, the statement said. "We hope travelers can obtain the latest information about travel safety before they start their trips, so they can plan their trips properly and return home safely," the statement said.
■ Agriculture
Public urged to eat papaya
The Council of Agriculture asked the public yesterday to eat more papayas this season to help local growers. Officials from the council's Central Taiwan Office said that papayas are popular between the traditional consumption of pomelos during the Mid-Autumn Festival and before citrus fruits hit the market; therefore, papayas are the best choice now for consumers. The officials said Taiwan's papayas are best between August and November and they noted that green papayas can be used in a variety of dishes. Taiwan has more than 3,200 hectares of papaya-growing land, mainly in the center, south and east of the country, with an annual production of 136,000 tonnes.
■ Agriculture
Deal inked in Washington
A Taiwanese delegation signed a letter of intent with representatives of US grain manufacturers on Wednesday in Washington, promising to purchase US agricultural products worth US$2.7 billion. The 17-member delegation has called on the US Department of Agriculture, the Trade Representative Office and grain and wheat associations during their visit to Washington. The signing of the letter of intent and a party were held on the Capital Hill with representatives from grain manufacturers and five senators and five congressmen from major agriculture states on hand. Taiwan's representative to the US, Chen Chien-jen (程建人), said that the annual purchase of large quantities of US agricultural products highlights the close trade relations between the two countries. Chen noted that Taiwan is the eighth-largest trading partner of the US, as well as its eighth-largest export market.
■ Diplomacy
Army to clean up ordnance
The army yesterday announced that all the artillery shells left on the seabed following the live-fire Hankuang No. 19 exercise will be cleaned up within a week. The underwater clean-up began yesterday off northeastern Ilan, where the Hankuang No. 19 exercise took place on Sept. 4. The work started with a search for all exploded or unexploded shells under the sea by a mine sweeper which is equipped with state-of-the-art device capable of producing images of objects under the sea. After all the shells are located, the army will use fishing boats to retrieve them for disposal either on land or at sea. "We aim to free local fishermen of the fear that they might cause an accidental explosion because of the shells left under the sea," a spokesman for the army general headquarters 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,