■ Diplomacy
No christmas for you
The Vatican has asked Taiwan to make Christmas a national holiday, but the nation has refused on the grounds that it already has too many holidays, Taiwan radio reported yesterday. The Broadcasting Corporation of China (BCC) said Vatican Secretary of State Angela Sodano made the request to a Foreign Minister Mark Chen (陳唐山) when Chen visited the Holy See earlier this week. During their meeting, Cardinal Sodano asked why Taiwanese people do not have a day off at Christmas, and expressed the hope that Taiwan would make Christmas a national holiday, BCC said. Chen told Sodano that Taiwanese nationals can take two days off every other week and many businesses are already complaining that there are too many holidays, so it would not be easy to make Christmas a national holiday.
■ Diplomacy
Colombians arrive
Camilo Sanchez Ortega, chairman of Colombia's Liberal Party, and a delegation of other Colombians arrived in Taiwan yesterday for a five-day visit. During his stay, Sanchez and his delegation, which includes his wife, will visit the Legislative Yuan and meet with Vice Minister of Economic Affairs Chen Ruey-long (陳瑞隆) and Vice Minister of Foreign Affairs Francisco Hwang (黃瀧元). They will also attend a luncheon hosted by Hwang. The group will visit cultural and economic facilities including the National Palace Museum, the Taipei World Trade Center, the Taipei 101 Business Center and the Taiwan Handcraft Promotion Center before departing on July 7.
■ Diplomacy
We're friends with Canada
Ties between Taiwan and Canada are improving despite Beijing's persistent attempts to disrupt the relationship, Taiwan's representative to Canada said in Vancouver on Friday. Speaking to a group of Taiwanese living in Canada, Thomas Chen (陳東壁) said that although the absence of diplomatic ties does impose some restraints on the development of bilateral ties, the Canadian parliament and people are friendly toward Taiwan and support the nation's bid to join the WHO. In order to provide an example illustrating friendly relations between the two sides, Chen said that many senior Taiwanese officials have visited Canada in a private capacity in the last three years, which he said is impossible in many other countries.
■ Crime
Bereaved travel to Japan
People close to the Taiwanese student who was found dead while traveling in Japan departed for Japan yesterday morning. The parents, uncle, younger brother and boyfriend of Hsiao Jen-chiao (蕭任喬), 21, a Japanese Literature major at Taiwan's Providence University, took a Japan Asia Airways flight to Tokyo yesterday. Hsiao, who was on a five-day tour to Japan, was strangled to death last Monday. The suspect, a 25-year-old Japanese man surnamed Watanabe, turned himself in on Thursday.
■ Education
Students to serve villages
The Council of Indigenous People is sending 120 Aboriginal college students to do community service in remote Aboriginal communities throughout Taiwan from July 8 to July 29. During the 22-day program, the students will learn more about Aboriginal cultures and lifestyles. The program also is designed to teach the students about Aboriginal languages and to foster a spirit of service as students give to the communities.
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,