■ Medical
Worms grow in man's mouth
Three worms -- each measuring 3cm -- grew in the mouth of a 73-year-old paralyzed man because his family members never cleaned his mouth, a local TV channel reported yesterday. The man from Ilan County had been bed-ridden for many years due to paralysis. His mouth had always been left open, but his family members never cleaned his teeth, the TV channel reported. Recently family members noticed three white worms wriggling in the man's mouth and sent him to hospital. Doctors removed the worms and believed they had developed after flies laid eggs in the man's mouth. The doctors reprimanded the patient's family for ignoring his oral hygiene, and urged family members of all invalids to clean their patients' teeth, change their bedding and kill flies and mosquitoes in the house, the TV channel said.
■ Development
GOH plans to empower girls
The Garden of Hope Foundation (GOH) is hoping to empower teenage girls in Taipei with its July "Girls Working Day" plan. Foundation representatives said that they got the idea for an externship or mentoring event from the US' "Take Your Daughter to Work Day." Hoping a similar event would help Taiwanese girls get a glimpse of their dream careers, the GOH decided to present Taiwan's first "Girls Working Day" this July. The foundation hopes to find around 15 girls between 16 and 18 years of age in the National Taiwan University area with career plans. Once girls have registered their dream careers, the foundation will try to find businesses and employees that match the girls' requirements. The seminar will last three days, from July 28 to July 30. To learn more, call the GOH at (02)2369-0885, ext. 547.
■ Politics
China reminded of WHO rules
The Chinese authorities should protect Taiwan business interests in China and should not mix politics with economics in this area, a government official said yesterday. Chiu Tai-san (邱太三), vice chairman of the Mainland Affairs Council (MAC), made the call on the grounds that China, as a member of the World Trade Organization (WTO), should follow the WTO's regulations on discrimination. Stressing that China should live up to its repeated pledges that "economics should be separate from politics," Chiu said that the authorities of some provinces have gone against the principle set by Beijing and have resorted to various measures to undermine the business interests of some Taiwanese companies operating in their jurisdictions.
■ Commerce
ITRI to host seminar
A two-day meeting on the commercialization of Asia-Pacific micro-electro-mechanical-systems (MEMS) and its market development will open at the Industrial Technology Research Institute (ITRI) in Hsinchu on Thursday. The meeting will be co-sponsored by the institute's Materials Research Laboratories, the Micro and Nanotechnology Commercialization Education Foundation and a Taiwanese engineering association in North America. Lab officials said that MEMS has wide applications, including in consumer electronics, optical and wireless communications, automobile electronics and environmental protection, and is expected to become the core manufacturing technology. The officials said that to promote related technology and the commercialization of the system, the two-day meeting will invite 150 leaders in the area from the US and the Asia-Pacific region to share their experiences.
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,