■ Politics
Truth committee sought
A group of White Terror victims and their families yesterday urged the to-be-elected sixth legislature to establish a "post-war human rights violation truth investigation committee" so that the historical truth about
the White Terror period could be told and victims' names cleared. The group, under the name of "Fifties White Terror Political Cases Redress Promotion Asso-ciation," said that most people have a very limited knowledge of the White Terror period. Association chairman Chen Peng-yun (陳鵬雲) said that, although the government has been making reparations to the victims and their families, the responsibility for the unfair verdicts the victims received has not been properly addressed, nor have their confiscated properties and good names been restored.
■ Environment
Sustainablity touted
An environmental group said that 66 legislators from across the political spec-trum, or 30 percent of all members of the Legislative Yuan, have signed a decla-ration committing them-selves to pursuing sus-tainable development to protect the environment.
The Taiwan Environmental Protection Union and a dozen other civic groups announced the legislators' names at a press conference yesterday. Union president Chen Chiao-hua (陳椒華) said that 37 legislators from the Democratic Progressive Party, 10 from the Taiwan Solidarity Union, nine from the Chinese Nationalist
Party (KMT), one from the People First Party and nine independent legislators signed the declaration. She said that a certain political party questioned the union's motive in seeking
the endorsement of legis-lators and refused to sign
it. Chen stressed that the union's goal was to promote environmental protection.
■ Environment
Goodall plant trees
Taipei Mayor Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九) joined British conservationist Jane Goodall at a tree-planting activity
at the Taipei American School yesterday. Ma and Goodall planted four trees on the school's campus
and the sidewalk outside
the school. Ma told Goodall that the city government adopted a set of tree-protection regulations last year to preserve rare trees and trees of a certain height, age and circumference in the city. Ma said he hopes the Roots and Shoots program promoted by the Jane Good-all Institute will continue
to expand in this country to educate students to protect the environment. There are already 415
Roots and Shoots groups in kindergartens, elementary schools, high schools, colleges and communities
in Taiwan.
■ Business
Premier warns Japan
This nation is expected to become an important supplier in the global optoelectronics industrial chain within a few years
with more government and private investment to establish new companies in industrial parks, Premier
Yu Shyi-kun said in Yunlin yesterday. The optoelec-tronics manufacturing industry is the second "trillion star" industry -- after the semiconductor industry -- the government hopes to build, Yu said at a ground-breaking ceremony for the Yunlin division of the Central Taiwan Science Park. Once the development of the optoelectronics manufacturing industry is in full swing, hopefully in three to four years, the nation's optoelectronics industry will be able to surpass Japan's production levels, Yu said.
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
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,
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