■ Trade
Evergreen chief in Panama
Panamanian President Mireya Moscoso met with Chang Yung-fa (張榮發) at the presidential office in Panama City yesterday. Chang is the founder and chairman of the Evergreen Group, which maintains one of the world's largest container fleets and has the nation's second largest airline. Saying that it is normal for Chang to visit Panama as he has business operations there, Minister of Foreign Affairs Mark Chen (陳唐山) yesterday said he was not clear whether Chang's visit to Panama also shouldered a political mission. Moscoso and Chang e exchanged views on a wide range of subjects and on Panama's investment climate in particular, according to a press release by the Presidential Office. Moscoso expressed her appreciation to Chang for Evergreen's investments in Panama.
■ Population
Planners mull gray society
The nation's top economic planning agency will hold a seminar to formulate new population policies early next month, and is inviting scholars and social groups to give their views. The August 5 seminar by the Council for Economic Plan-ning and Development (CEPD) will discuss birth rates dropping to new lows and the population graying. CEPD officials said the seminar's themes will include the impact of immigrants, the changing population structure's effects on educational development and the labor force, and how to plan for economic security and justice. The birth rate has dropped to 1.2 percent, well below the 2 percent widely considered necessary to sustain current population levels.
■ Defense
Chen praises relief help
President Chen Shui-bian (陳水扁) lauded the armed forces yesterday for their assistance in post-disaster relief and rehabilitation after Tropical Storm Mindulle. Chen commended the military for its role in post-disaster relief operations while addressing a joint graduation ceremony of the five military academies. Post-disaster relief and rehabilitation should be a basic task of a modern armed forces, he said. The military has so far dispatched more than 60,000 troops to take part in relief and rehabilitation operations. Chen also stressed the importance of delinking the military from politics, saying it a key element of his military reform plan. Chen said the armed forces should fight for the nation's survival and development and for the safety and well-being of the people.
■ Attractions
Taitung fest starts Aug. 1
The Austronesian Cultural Festival in Taitung County will begin Aug. 1, organizers said yesterday. Taitung County Magistrate Hsu Ching-yuan (徐慶元) issued an invitation at a news conference held jointly with the Tourism Bureau to invite the public to visit the annual festival. The Austronesian Cultural Festival is one of 12 major folk festivals promoted by the bureau in conjunction with local authorities in an effort to share the nation's natural and cultural resources. Hsu praised the festival as a major attraction in Taitung County and described the series of cultural activities featuring Aboriginal tribes, as well as a wide variety of other activities such as whitewater rafting and paragliding. In additional to activities featuring local flavors and features, 13 foreign groups from India, Indonesia, Japan, China, Mexico, the Philippines and Thailand will also perform during the festival.
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,