■ Weather
Cold to stay until Thursday
Snow fell on the nation's highest peak yesterday as a wet cold front brought cold weather and showers, the Central Weather Bureau reported. The bureau's Yushan (玉山) meteorological station reported that the mountain received 0.1cm of snow in a 10-minute flurry in the early morning. Yushan, one of the most popular hiking destinations, was only reopened to the public on March 1 after an annual one-month closure aimed at allowing the environment and wildlife some time to recover from the influence of human activity. Bureau meteorologists forecast even colder weather today as the cold air mass from China becomes more and more powerful, and further snowfalls are predicted.
■ Festivals
Reflecting Hakka culture
The Council for Hakka Affairs held a meeting yesterday during which it asked designers, manufacturers and sales outlets to provide products reflecting Hakka culture to accompany this year's paulownia flower season, better known as the Tung Blossom Festival. The Paulownia flowers, found in the northern mountainous areas, will be in full bloom next month and in May. The white flowers have become a symbol of the Hakka people. The blooming season is celebrated every year with Hakka music and songs and other cultural traditions that reflect the Hakka people's way of life, their gregariousness, hospitality and hardworking spirit. Chuang Chin-hua (莊錦華), head of the Council for Hakka Affairs, told reporters that some 300 products related to Hakka culture are expected to be put on the market during the festival.
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,