Taipei's Shilin District has geared up to apply to join the Asia-Pacific Alliance for Healthy Cities under the WHO's framework, a Taipei City Government official said yesterday.
A Shilin Healthy Cities Alliance Bid Promotion Association was established yesterday by 80 individuals and organizations from the district to help push for inclusion in the regional alliance, said Teng Su-wen (鄧素文), deputy director of Taipei's Department of Health.
The establishment of the association is aimed at building partnerships and civil participation among the alliance members, Teng said.
She said the formation of the alliance was aimed at improving the quality of life in urban communities, reaffirming that health is a fundamental right, that the attainment of the highest possible level of health requires action by many sectors and recognizing urbanization as a worldwide phenomenon.
Teng said the association would file an application with the Asia-Pacific Alliance for Healthy Cities in June.
She said that Shilin District -- which has the top ratio of "green land" accessibility and availability to residents among all of Taipei's districts -- was blessed by having the National Palace Museum, Yangmingshan National Park, the Zhishanyan Prehistoric Site, the former presidential residence and a large number of hiking trails. These were only a few of the factors that make the district a great place to live, she said.
The city government will help push for alliance membership for both Shilin and Beitou districts this year, while seeking membership for Songshan, Zhongshan and Wanhua districts next year, Teng said.
Daan became the first Taipei district to be admitted into the alliance last year, she said.
The alliance has 62 member cities from more than 10 countries and areas in the Asia-Pacific region.
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