■ Cross-strait ties
Pandas to woo Taiwan
Beijing yesterday unveiled a list of 11 pandas from among which it plans to pick two to send as a gift to Taiwan, hoping to boost Taiwanese public sentiment in favor of unification. The pandas, six males and five females, range in age from one to five and come from the Wulong Nature Reserve, according to reserve spokesman Zhang Hemin. Experts are letting the pandas spend time with each other to see which two interact the best. Beijing hopes to send a compatible male and female that will eventually breed in Taiwan.
■ Cross-strait ties
MAC working on air links
The opening of direct air links between Taiwan and China seems unlikely before next year, but the government will still do its best to eliminate hurdles to two-way talks on the issue, Mainland Affairs Council Chairman Joseph Wu (吳釗燮) said yesterday. Wu, however, dismissed a newspaper report that cross-strait air links might be set up before the beginning of the next year. He said the report was groundless speculation, and that it is too early to talk about the matter when concrete results have yet to be worked out. Negotiations on direct charter cargo and passenger services and on allowing Chinese tourists to visit Taiwan remained gridlocked, Wu said. He quoted sources as saying that Beijing is attempting to postpone the talks until after Taiwan's year-end elections. Beijing might be making a mistake, he said, since there are elections almost every year in Taiwan, and Beijing must not weigh bilateral negotiations from that viewpoint. "It is extremely unwise for Beijing to adopt that approach since it will not benefit the people in Taiwan -- something contrary to the Beijing leaders' repeated claims that they will do whatever they can to accomplish all tasks that are beneficial to the Taiwan people," he said.
■ Cross-strait ties
PRC officials to visit
A group of about 60 people, lead by Shao Qiwei (邵琪偉), director of China's National Tourism Administration, will visit Taiwan at the end of this month. The group's 10-day visit is seen as a step toward the opening of Taiwan to Chinese tourists. Li Weiyi (李維一), the spokesperson for Beijing's Taiwan Affairs Office the group will arrive on Oct. 28 and will visit scenic spots and learn about the transportation facilities in Taiwan. Lee said the trip is aimed at preparing to encourage Chinese people to visit Taiwan. The Mainland Affairs Council said it has yet to get an application from the group. "We haven't gotten the application from the Chinese authority, but we are happy to see their visit to Taiwan," council Vice Chairman You Ying-lung (游盈隆) said.
■ Politics
Lien to go to China again
Former Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) chairman Lien Chan (連戰) will make a second private trip to China, an aide said yesterday. Lien and his wife Lien Fang Yu (連方瑀) were scheduled to fly to the northeastern Chinese city of Shenyang today and meet his mother's relatives there, said Lien's secretary. The couple will also visit Dalian, Qingdao, Yantai and Chengdu before returning to Taiwan on Oct. 28. Lien became the first KMT leader to visit China in 56 years during a trip last spring.
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,