■ Legislature
Arms bill rejected again
The Procedure Committee yesterday rejected the long-stalled arms procurement plan, for the 30th time, as well as the confirmation of President Chen Shui-bian's (陳水扁) nominees for the Control Yuan. The pan-blue dominated committee voted down the two bills yet again. However, it did place the proposed amendments to the Statute Governing the Relations Between the People of the Taiwan Area and the Mainland Area (兩岸人民關係條例), amendments to the Organic Law of the Judicial Yuan (司法院組織法) and the special flood-control bill proposed by the People First Party (PFP) caucus on the legislative agenda. The committee also elected three conveners to take turns chairing the weekly meeting. They are Democratic Progressive Party caucus whip William Lai (賴清德), Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) caucus whip Pan Wei-kang (潘維剛) and PFP caucus whip Lin Hui-kuan (林惠官).
■ Diplomacy
Lee's speech confirmed
The National Press Club in Washington confirmed on Monday that former president Lee Teng-hui (李登輝) will give a speech at the club on Oct. 20. A club official said Lee will also take questions from the audience after his speech. In addition, the Formosan Association for Public Affairs (FAPA), which is in charge of Lee's itinerary while in Washington, has also arranged for him to give a brief speech at a luncheon on Capitol Hill. David Lee (李大維), the nation's representative to the US, said Monday that he will act according to the protocol for greeting former heads of state set up by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs two years ago. Lee will also probably meet with Alaska Governor Frank Murkowski in Anchorage before he flies to New York, Washington and Los Angeles. Lee visited the US in 1995 and spoke at his alma mater, Cornell University, triggering vehement protests from Beijing. After retiring in 2000, he again visited Cornell in June 2001.
■ Weather
Typhoon may head this way
Typhoon Longwang, the 19th typhoon this year, has increased its intensity to that of a medium typhoon and it will be clear in about three days whether it will affect the country, the Central Weather Bureau reported yesterday. It is uncertain yet whether Longwang, still 2,100km away, will affect the nation because the high pressure over the Pacific Ocean is not stable. The situation will be clearer by Friday. If Longwang moves toward Taiwan, a warning could be issued on Sunday, the bureau said.
■ Education
Foreign students in Taichung
More than 200 students from 36 countries have been studying Chinese language and culture at Providence University in Shalu (沙鹿) Township, Taichung County, since the beginning of the month, university officials said. The school has the number of foreign students of any university or college in the central Taiwan, according to the university, whose Chinese Language Education Center (CLEC) began enrolling students in 1996. One of the CLEC students, Alexander Oxmar Ramireg Bazan from Paraguay, said he is grateful to his government giving him chance to study at the university. Cyntia Bahiana Esinolamonges, also from Paraguay, said she had been warmly greeted at the airport by a CLEC teacher and students from the Spanish language and culture department. The kindness of Taiwanese people was her first impression of the country, she 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
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,