■ Weather
Bureau warns of cold front
The Central Weather Bureau issued a low temperature alert yesterday as the first cold front this winter hit the nation last night. Heavy rainfall is expected to occur in northern and northeastern Taiwan over the weekend, the bureau said. The cold mass from the north will hover above Taiwan until Monday. Earlier this week, the bureau even predicted that the cold weather might bring snow to the Yushan region. The lowest temperature will probably occur tomorrow, with the temperature in coastal areas of central and northern Taiwan, Kinmen and Matsu likely to drop below 10oC. The bureau warned fish breeders to take precautions against potential damage brought by the low temperatures.
■ Politics
KMT serious about coalition
Legislative Speaker Wang Jin-pyng (王金平) yesterday urged Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) Chairman Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九) to meet with People First Party Chairman James Soong (宋楚瑜) over the two parties' cooperation. Wang made the remarks after receiving Ma at his residence yesterday morning. Ma said the party considers forming a coalition with the PFP a serious matter and he wished Wang -- on good terms with Soong -- to convey the party's sincerity. Wang said the two parties should realize that their mutual understanding and collaboration would help the stability of the political situation. "Ma needs to meet with Soong so that they can talk out their ideas frankly. It wouldn't be hard to form the coalition as long as they are in good faith," Wang said.
■ Politics
`Feudal' words draw fire
Former presidential adviser Koo Kwang-ming (辜寬敏) yesterday came under fire from female lawmakers across party lines for his remarks on Thursday that people wearing skirts weren't fit to be commander in chief. Koo suggested that Vice President Annette Lu (呂秀蓮) was not qualified to run in the 2008 presidential election. Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) Legislator Lan Mei-ching (藍美津) told a press conference that Koo's stance on the matter was full of "male chauvinism." "I don't understand why the elders still have such an out-of-date idea inherited from the feudal period," DPP Legislator Hsu Rong-shu (許榮淑) said. KMT Legislator Lee Jih-chu (李紀珠) said she regretted that Koo viewed women in that way. "He doesn't even know how to respect people," she said.
■ Society
Three doctors disciplined
Three doctors in Taipei City Hospital's department of internal medicine were disciplined by the hospital administration yesterday after a patient died falling out of bed. The patient, surnamed Hsia, was hospitalized on Dec. 2 suffering from cholecystitis. In the early hours of Dec. 3 Hsia was discovered by hospital staff lying unconscious on the ground beneath his bed. CPR was performed and Hsia's doctor and duty physicians were informed, but Hsia died soon after. Hsia's family has blamed his death on the absence of medical staff in the ward. The hospital held a review meeting on Thursday and decided to discipline the director of the internal medicine department, the doctor in charge of Hsia and the physician who was on duty the night of Hsia's death, the hospital's Vice President Huang Chun-cheng (黃遵誠) 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,