■ Culture
Film makers win awards
Taiwan won two awards at the 49th Asia-Pacific Film Festival held Sept. 21 to Sept. 25 in Fukuoka, Japan. The film Taipei 21, directed by Yang Shun-ching (楊順清), was chosen from among 39 movies from 13 countries as the winner of the Best Film Award at the festival. Meanwhile, Lin Mei-shiu (林美秀) captured the Best Supporting Actress Award for her performance in another Taiwanese-made film Comes the Black Dog. The Taiwanese delegation to the festival returned to Taipei Saturday.
■ Politics
Pan-blues to release names
The caucuses of the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) and People First Party at the Legislative Yuan are set to announce today a list of names they recommend for a March 19 Shooting Truth Investigation Special Committee Statute (三一九槍擊事件真相調查特別委員會條例)to investigate the March 19 shooting of President Chen Shui-bian (陳水扁) and Vice President Annette Lu (呂秀蓮), a KMT official said yesterday. Tseng Yung-Chuan (曾永權), director of the KMT's Central Policy Coordination Committee, said in response to media questions that the caucuses will announce the list to the public at a press conference and then send it to the Legislative Yuan secretariat. Chen has signed the bill, which was passed by the Legislative Yuan Sept. 24. The Democratic Progressive Party and the Taiwan Solidarity Union have refused to recommend members for the commission because they argue it is unconstitutional.
■ Politics
Sources say poll date set
The 2004 legislative elections will be held Dec. 11, sources from the Central Election Commission reported yesterday. The commission will post an official bulletin today after commission Chairman Chang Cheng-hsiung (張政雄) formally announces the election date. A total of 225 seats will be up for grabs, including 168 regional legislative seats, eight Aboriginal seats, eight overseas Chinese seats and 41 at-large seats. The 168 regional legislators will be elected from the special municipalities, counties and cities around the country, including Kinmen and Matsu, while the 41 at-large legislators will be chosen by proportional representation of political parties based on ballots each party garners in the elections. Registration for candidacy in the elections will last from Oct. 8 through Oct. 12 and the official campaign period will start Dec. 1 and end Dec. 10, commission officials said.
■ Charity
Clothes sent to Gambia
The Buddha's Light International Association (BLIA) has donated US$300,000-worth of clothes to The Gambia, a spokesman for the association's Taiwan chapter said yesterday. The gift was handed over to Gambian Foreign Affairs Minister Baboucarr Blaise Jagne by Wang Chiao-jung (王喬榮), president of the BLIA's New York chapter, in a ceremony held in New York Friday, the spokesman said. The donation is designed to express the Taiwanese people's love and concern for the Gambian people, the spokesman said. Most Gambian people are Muslims. Jagne was quoted as saying at the ceremony that the donation indicates that religious faith can transcend national boundaries to convey peace, love and benevolence. The BLIA was founded by global followers of venerable Buddhist Master Hsin Yun (星雲), founder of the Fo Kuang Shan monastery in Kaohsiung County.
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,