■ Water
Ample water for science park
Although a water shortage crisis is looming in the Tainan area, the Southern Taiwan Science Park does not have a water shortage, a park administration official said yesterday. Chen Chun-wei (陳俊偉), deputy director of the Southern Taiwan Science Park Administration, said that water supplies for high-tech facilities should be secured through the end of this year as the Nanhua Reservoir will supply water for the park, which consumes over 10,000m3 of water per day. The Tsengwen Reservoir and the Wushantou Reservoir, two prime providers in the area, now contain a combined 7 million cubic meters of water, a level far short of the estimated 133 million cubic meters needed for the second crop irrigation planned for late this month on the Chianan Plain -- Taiwan's leading rice-producing region.
■ Justice
Manager jailed for explosion
A Taiwanese manager of a company in Vietnam was given a three-year prison sentence after an explosion in his factory left 11 Vietnamese workers dead and 49 injured, a court official said yesterday. Hsu Guei-lung, the vice director of a Taiwanese rattan furniture manufacturing company, designed a drying room that failed to meet fire safety standards, said Hong Mai, an official from Tay Ninh province people's court. Not long after the drying and storage room was completed in January last year, a power surge in the room containing 1,700 rattan sofas that had been treated with a flammable chemical caused an explosion, the court official said. Fires from the explosion spread to other parts of the manufacturing plant, killing 11 workers and injuring 49 others, Mai said from the court, 100km east of Ho Chi Minh City.
■ Law Enforcement
Officer found dead in office
Chiang Ching-hui (江錦輝), an outstanding police officer who had taken part in many international criminal investigations, was found dead on the floor of his office in Taipei early yesterday. Chiang, 48, had been working day and night preparing a special report to be delivered at an outstanding police citation ceremony in Manila on Monday, his colleagues at the Criminal Investigation Bureau's (CIB) international affairs department said. Initial investigations show that Chiang did not sustain any injuries and there were no signs that anyone had entered Chiang's office during the night.
■ Diplomacy
MOFA reaffirms Panama ties
Relations with Panama are solid, and they will not be affected by the recent visit of a top Chinese official to the Central American country, Ministry of Foreign Affairs spokesman Richard Shih (石瑞琦) said yesterday. Shih was responding to reports that Control Yuan President Fredrick Chien (錢復) is visiting Panama to cement bilateral relations on the heels of a visit last week by Chinese Vice Foreign Affairs Minister Zhou Wenzhong (周文重). Shih said Chien's trip has nothing to do with Zhou's visit, adding that Chien is making an additional visit to Panama. Chien was invited by his Panamanian counterpart to attend an annual conference of ombudsmen in Central America, Shih said, adding that the trip had been planned and fina;ized long ago. Chien will also call on President Mireya Elisa Moscoso and other government officials during his stay.
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,