■ DEFENSE
Pentagon urges new contract
The Pentagon on Wednesday announced a possible contract with Taiwan to continue training Taiwanese F-16 fighter pilots in Arizona and provide air-to-air missiles for live fire drills. The notification to the US Congress said the contract was valued at as high as US$280 million. It includes 10 AIM-9M Sidewinder missiles and five AIM-7M Sparrow missiles for live fire exercises at Luke Air Force Base in Arizona, the Pentagon said. The contract also provides for the continuation of a program to train Taiwanese pilots at Luke Air Force Base and logistics support for F-16 fighter aircraft, it said. "It is vital to the US national interests to assist the recipient in developing and maintaining a strong and ready self-defense capability, which will contribute to an acceptable military balance in the area," the Defense Security and Cooperation Agency said in a statement. It said the sale was consistent with the Taiwan Relations Act.
■ DIPLOMACY
Japan releases fishermen
A Ministry of Foreign Affairs official yesterday confirmed that a Taiwanese fishing boat, chased and caught by a Japanese coast guard ship for illegal fishing near Miyako Island, was released after paying millions of NT dollars in fines. Foreign Affairs Ministry spokesman Michel Lu (呂慶龍) yesterday said the fishing boat was from Ilan County. He said the fishing boat and its crew had been escorted to Yokohama and later returned to Taiwan after paying a fine of ?4.08 million (US$35,228). A Chinese-language newspaper reported yesterday that the Taiwanese fishing boat had defied a Japanese coast guard order to leave the area and was chased by the Japanese cruiser from early Tuesday morning until Wednesday night.
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