■ Diplomacy
Panama gets aid donation
Taiwan has donated funds for the Panamanian government to build elementary schools in remote rural regions, repair highway surfaces and expand prison facilities as part of a bilateral cooperation program between the two countries. Hou Ping-fu (侯平福), Taiwan's ambassador to Panama, presented the funds on behalf of the government in a ceremony held at Panama's Ministry of Foreign Affairs on Thursday. Panamanian first lady Vivian Fernandez de Torrijos, Minister of Public Works Benjamin Colamarco and Minister of the Interior and Justice Olga Golcher received the donations. A portion of the aid will finance construction of 90 elementary schools in the countryside as the Panamanian government is actively promoting compulsory education in the country's rural and distant communities, Hou said. The fund will also be used to finance a project to repair a 20km section of highway leading to the indigenous community of Darien in eastern Panama, Hou said, adding that the repair project would make it easier for Aborigines to see a doctor in urban areas.
■ Diplomacy
Chen Chu staying in hospital
Kaohsiung Mayor Chen Chu (陳菊), who has been hospitalized since suffering a stroke on April 26, will remain in hospital for two more weeks for further rehabilitation, a city government official said yesterday. According to Hsiao Yu-cheng (蕭裕正) , director of the Kaohsiung City Government's Department of Information, Chen's doctors at the Kaohsiung Medical Hospital advised her to build up strength in her right leg and lose more weight before being discharged from the hospital.
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