■ Leisure
Market extends service
The weekend Jianguo Flower Market (建國花市) is extending its service to accommodate holiday shoppers. The market will be open daily from 9am to 10pm from today through Friday and from 9am to 6pm on Lunar New Year's eve on Saturday. The market is also holding an exhibition on peonies, known as the "king of the flowers" and a popular choice among Chinese who believe they bring fortune and good luck. The exhibition will feature imported peonies from Japan, flower arrangements to mark the advent of the year of the pig and gardening demonstration and courses. The market will be closed from Lunar New Year's day and will reopen on the first weekend in March. For more information, call (02) 2702-6493.
■ Health
Public urged to donate blood
The Kaohsiung Blood Center is calling on the public to donate blood ahead of the Lunar New Year, which falls next Sunday, to help deal with an expected blood shortage during the holidays, the center's spokesman said yesterday. The center provides about 1,200 250cc bags of blood to medical institutes in Kaohsiung and Pingtung cities and counties daily, the spokesman said, adding that the center has a backup supply of only four days -- well below its minimum safety level of seven days. With several cold fronts forecast to hit the nation during the holiday period, the center expects an increase in the number of patients with cardiovascular disease, putting a strain on blood supply, the spokesman said. All four blood types -- O, A, B and AB -- are in short supply, and the center welcomes donations to ensure sufficient supplies of blood during the holidays, the spokesman said.
■ Politics
Ballot recount tomorrow
The Kaohsiung Election Commission yesterday began categorizing ballots from December's Kaohsiung mayoral election in preparation for the ballot recount at the Kaohsiung District Court tomorrow. The court is expected to conduct a thorough reexamination of the 6,622 invalid ballots in accordance with a court ruling on Feb. 2. Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) Kaohsiung mayoral candidate Huang Chun-ying (黃俊英), along with his lawyer and KMT Kaohsiung City Councilor Huang Po-lin (黃柏霖), went to the commission's office yesterday to supervise the ballot categorization. Huang Chun-ying told the press that he hoped "democratic values could be safeguarded" through the recount. Asked whether he thought he would emerge the victor after the recount, Huang said he would respect the final judicial ruling. Huang lost the election to Kaohsiung Mayor Chen Chu (陳菊) by a margin of 1,114 votes. He had filed suit to have the results annulled.
■ Environment
New Year `clean up'
The Environmental Protection Administration (EPA) yesterday launched a one-week national "clean-up" campaign ahead of the Lunar New Year. The campaign, which began yesterday and runs until Friday, is designed around the traditional notion of sweeping out the old to make way for the new. During the clean-up campaign, people can dispose of any large waste items, such as old furniture, for recycling at designated sites and time as regulated by local governments. While cleaning up indoors, people should check for any possible breeding spots for disease-carrying mosquitoes in or around their homes, EPA officials suggested. They also reminded people to clean the public area within four meters of their homes, including road surfaces and gullies.
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,