■ Politics
KMT lawmaker drops out
Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) Legislator Hung Hsiu-chu (洪秀柱) yesterday announced that she is dropping out of the KMT's preliminaries ahead of the Taipei County commissioner election, paring the number of those registered for the party's nomination down to five. Hung told a press conference yesterday that she had decided to drop out of the race after realizing that she was falling behind in party polling. Although Hung said that she had doubts about the methodology used in the polls, she said that it was clear that she did not have the financial power needed to continue in the race.
■ Weather
`Light typhoon' strengthens
A low pressure system near Guam has gained strength to become a tropical storm, but it is still too early to predict whether the "light typhoon" will affect Taiwan in the next few days, the Central Weather Bureau reported yesterday. Typhoon Nesat, the fourth typhoon reported in the Pacific this year, was located 2,700km away from Taiwan, moving west-northwest at a speed of 15kph at 10am yesterday, according to meteorologists.
■ Environment
EPA to dispatch monitors
The Environmental Protection Administration (EPA) is planning to dispatch 10-member environmental protection squads to each city and county to reinforce surveillance in local areas, an official said yesterday. Last December, the EPA recruited several retired public servants, military personnel and public school teachers to form the first "environmental guard" in the country. Encouraged by the guard's efficient performance, the EPA has decided to recruit more retired public servants to engage in the volunteer work. The guard can help local environmental protection authorities collect evidence, including photos, against suspected polluters and help stop illegal activities before they expand into major environmental incidents, the official said. Retired public servants, public school teachers and service persons aged under 70 can apply to volunteer. Those who are interested can apply at any of the EPA's offices, phone its hotline, (04) 2252-1718, ext. 163, or visit the bureau's Web site at www.epa.gov.tw.
■ Health
Schoolkids have problems
Most children aged between six and 15 in this country have problems with their vision, teeth and weight, according to the results of a general health survey released yesterday by the Ministry of Education. The survey, conducted by the ministry over this school year, found that 42.7 percent of elementary-school pupils were either too thin or too fat to meet the national weight standards set for the age group. The survey found that 16.4 percent of elementary-school and 24.6 percent of junior-high students are underweight or suffer from a growth disorder but have never obtained medical attention for the condition. It found that 7.8 percent of first-graders are overweight and that the obesity rate increased gradually grade-on-grade to reach an average of 15 percent among sixth-graders. The survey also found that 26.5 percent of first-graders had visual problems, a rate rising to 52.2 percent among sixth-graders. First-graders also have a higher percentage of dental problems than their fourth-grade counterparts, or 68.17 percent against 49.77 percent, indicating that children have dental problems even before they reach the age of 6, ministry officials 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,
‘GROWING UP TOGETHER’: Jensen Huang celebrated the nation’s role in the formation of the tech firm at a Silicon Valley gathering, saying ‘Taiwan saved Nvidia’ Taiwan is in the center of the new artificial intelligence (AI) revolution, Nvidia Corp CEO Jensen Huang (黃仁勳) told a gathering with Taiwanese on Thursday in Silicon Valley’s largest city, San Jose. Tainan-born Huang said it must be celebrated that “Taiwan is right in the middle” of a new industrial revolution in which “something new is being made, and made in a new way.” Huang recalled the manufacturing process of the RIVA 128 graphics processing unit, Nvidia’s first commercial success, describing it as the “most complicated chip at the time.” As Nvidia did not have the budget, he wrote a letter to Taiwan