■ PFP accused of `nonsense'
A civic group campaigning to end the construction of the nation's fourth nuclear power plant and to downsize the Legislative Yuan yesterday dismissed as "nonsense" People First Party (PFP) opposition to a proposal to reduce the number of seats in the Legislative Yuan through an amendment to the Constitution. Yeh Poh-wen (葉博文), a leader of the group, said the proposal has been discussed by political parties for more than three years and had been agreed to by all of them before the March 20 presidential election, contradicting the PFP's claim that passing the measure in the upcoming extraordinary session of the Legislative Yuan would be "hasty." Yeh said that his group, founded by former Democratic Progressive Party Chairman Lin I-hsiung (林義雄), will visit Legislative Yuan President Wang Jin-pyng (王金平) today to seek his support for putting the issue on the agenda of the Legislative Yuan's extra-ordinary session, which is to begin later this month. After that, Yeh said, Lin and his followers would begin walking around the Legis-lative Yuan complex or staging a sit-in until the issue is put on the agenda.
■ Medicine
Pray you don't need surgery
Deaths caused by compli-cations from anesthesia during surgery occurred at a rate of 178 deaths in a million last year -- a rate 17 times higher than in Japan and eight times greater than in the US, local media reported yesterday. A survey by Taiwan's Anesthetics Society found that of 570,000 people who were anesthe-tized in Taiwanese hospitals last year, 103 died and five became mentally incapa-citated, a Chinese-language newspaper reported. The society attributed the problem to a shortage of anesthesiologists, the report said. There are only 594 licensed anesthesiologists in Taiwan and each handles about 1,700 cases a year, according to the survey. The newspaper quoted Chu Kuang-hsin as saying that graduates from medical schools are reluctant to take up the profession. Another Chinese-language newspaper quoted anesthesiologist Lu Pin-rong as saying that some anesthesiologists will rush off after injecting a patient, leaving an unlicensed assistant to gauge how the patient reacts to the dose.
■ Education
Exam results to be posted
The College Entrance Examination Center today will post on its Web site -- www.uac.edu.tw -- the names of all students who passed the Joint College Entrance Examination. This is the first year that the center will not post a paper copy of the exam results on the doors of National Taiwan University -- a tradition that ran for more than 30 years. According to center esti-mates, this year's record-high 75.6 percent admission rate will allow 89,047 high school graduates to attend college.
■ Sports
Taiwan vanquishes Italy
Taiwan's national baseball team, playing as Chinese Taipei, defeated Italy 2-0 yesterday on the second day of a five-nation baseball tournament being held in Rome. Taiwan used three amateur pitchers and yielded one hit and no runs to Italy. Taiwan scored its first run in the bottom of the second inning with two consecutive hits. The team got its second run with two hits in the sixth inning. Taiwan's manager, Hsu Sheng-ming (徐生明), said the team was off form in terms of batting, but it was still able to prevail against host Italy. Taiwan was beaten by Cuba 4-0 in its first game in the tournament.
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,