■ Society
DJ's appeal rejected
A US national who was ordered by police to leave the country had his appeal against the deportation order rejected by a court late on Friday and was escorted to the airport by police later that evening to board a plane out of the country. The Taipei High Administrative Court threw out Charles Mack's request to overturn the deportation order. The immigration law stipulates that a person must be deported if he or she is deemed to be a danger to public health or social order. Mack disputed the decision, saying that the judgement had been influenced by the fact that he was black and that therefore it was discriminatory. He had also produced a medical certificate to prove that he no longer had the disease and claimed that he did not pose a danger to anyone.
■ Politics
Lee Teng-hui slams tycoons
Entrepreneurs who advocate direct trade and transportation links with China have not properly considered the question of national security, former President Lee Teng-hui (李登輝) said yesterday. Lee made the remarks while addressing the opening of classes at a school named after him. Lee resumed criticism of entrepreneurs such as Chang Yung-fa (張榮發), head of the shipping giant Evergreen Group, who has reportedly switched his support from President Chen Shui-bian (陳水扁) to Chen's rival in the presidential election, Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) Chairman Lien Chan (連戰), because of the government's continuing ban on trade and transportation links with China. The former president said businesspeople "act as if they're going to die if there are no direct cross-strait links," adding that he could not understand why they were not thinking about the implications for national security if Lien were elected president. He said the ban on direct cross-strait links merely demonstrated that national security had been placed ahead of the interests of businesspeople.
■ Health
Counties fight bird flu
A task force to fight the spread of avian flu was jointly set up on Friday by authorities in Kaohsiung City, Kaohsiung County and Pingtung County. Kaohsiung City Mayor Frank Hsieh (謝長廷), Kaohsiung County Commissioner Yang Chiu-hsing (楊秋興) and Pingtung County Commissioner Su Chia-chuan (蘇嘉全) will jointly serve as directors of the task force. Birds infected with the less virulent H5N2 virus have been discovered in southern Chiayi and central Changhua counties. As with a similar set of mechanisms established last year to contain the outbreak of SARS, tourism, public health and agriculture officials from the three governments will also staff the task force. Hsieh said the three government heads had full confidence that the collective mission would be a success in view of the results of last year's cooperative effort. In addition to stepping up inspection and monitoring of poultry farms, Hsieh said they would also ask coast guard authorities to increase surveillance of smugglers operating along the coast.
■ Earthquakes
Minor temblor rattles Suao
A moderate earthquake shook northeastern Taiwan yesterday, the Central Weather Bureau said, but no damage or injuries were immediately reported. The 4.5-magnitude quake was centered under the Pacific Ocean about 18km southeast of Suao, the bureau said. Suao is a fishing harbor 60km southeast of Taipei.
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,