The Government Information Office (GIO) is devouring government funds without creating and disseminating a positive image for Taiwan on the international stage, both pan-green and pan-blue lawmakers alleged yesterday.
Government Information Office Minister and Cabinet Spokesman Cheng Wen-tsang (鄭文燦) met with fierce criticism yesterday from all quarters while detailing his office's plans in the legislature's Education and Culture Committee to support the music and film industries as a means to garner "soft power."
"In keeping with Premier Su Tseng-chang's [蘇貞昌] concept of `walking the right path and producing solid results,' the GIO is committed to strengthening our partnerships with the film, TV and publishing industries in order to revitalize them and forge a positive international image for Taiwan," Cheng said, referring to a slogan meaning taking decisive action.
Citing a recent Economist article that referred to the Cabinet's campaign to change the name of state-run institutions as a "Cultural Revolution," Taiwan Solidarity Union (TSU) Legislator Lin Jih-jia (林志嘉) accused Cheng's office of failing to properly educate foreign media as to the campaign's true intention.
"That's not a positive term, you know," Lin said, referring to "Cultural Revolution," China's disastrous campaign from 1966 to 1976 to stamp out traditional Chinese culture and transform the country into a communist utopia.
"Come on, you should be protecting the country's dignity. How come you're not scrambling to talk to CNN or the BBC, instead of just holding press conferences for local media?" Lin said.
Cheng responded that his office was trying to get its message "out to the world," but Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) Legislator Ting Shou-chung (丁守中) told Cheng he wasn't doing enough and that the nation is becoming further marginalized in the world.
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,