■ TRANSPORTATION
Cable car breaks down again
The Maokong Cable Car system was shut down for almost an hour and a half after a circuit board malfunctioned at the Taipei Zoo Station yesterday afternoon. The incident renewed safety concerns because the system had been closed on Monday for weekly maintenance. Yesterday's malfunction occurred about 3pm -- after a thundershower caused a temporary shut down at 1:05pm. The Taipei Rapid Transit Corp (TRTC) said its engineers were trying to determine if the storm and circuit board malfunction were connected. Service resumed at 4:30pm after workers replaced the circuit board. In response to questions about the system's safety, TRTC division chief Huang Chiang-chang (黃建昌) said Monday's maintenance work did not cover the circuit board. "We can't check everything in one day, but we are confident about the system's stability after a few weeks of regular checkups," Huang said. Meanwhile, a survey released by the Taipei City Government revealed that just 14 percent of residents were satisfied with the operation of the cable car system.
■ DIPLOMACY
Chen to visit Honduras
Simon Ko (柯森耀), director-general of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs' Department of Central and South American Affairs, said yesterday that President Chen Shui-bian (陳水扁) will visit allies in Central America later this month and attend a summit in Honduras on Aug. 20. Ko said the ministry had sent out invitations to the presidents of Taiwan's seven allies in the region to the summit. Ko said that Chen does not plan to visit Suriname, which is reportedly keen to improve diplomatic relations with Taiwan, but that a stop in new ally St. Lucia was still being mulled.
■ SPORTS
IWGA chief arrives
Ron Froehlich, president of the International World Games Association (IWGA), arrived at Kaohsiung to attend preparatory meetings for the 2009 World Games yesterday. Kaohsiung City Government officials said that Froehlich was scheduled to help unveil a countdown signboard for the world games with Kaohsiung Mayor Chen Chu (陳菊) today. Chen said the construction of the main stadium was on schedule and that the city government had asked contractors for the Kaohsiung Arena to make up for the delays in their building schedule. She said her appeal of the annulment of last December's mayoral election result will not influence the city's preparation for the games because the city is bound by an agreement with the IWGA.
■ ECONOMY
Food price index stable
The food price index did not rise noticeably in the first half of the year in comparison with price indexes in Japan, South Korea, Singapore and the US, a report released by the Directorate-General of Budget, Accounting and Statistics (DGBAS) on Monday showed. The report showed that average price index for food from January to June dropped about 1 percent compared with the previous year's index. The drop has been attributed mainly to the falling prices of fruits and vegetables, which dropped 10.5 percent and 2.5 percent respectively. The DGBAS said that price buoyancy in other countries was largely due to rising prices on the international market. The price index showed a rise of 0.5 percent for grain products, 1.6 percent for diary products and 3.1 percent for edible oils, which are relatively low compared to increases in other countries, the DGBAS report said.
■ ARTS AND CULTURES
Hou knows kung fu
Cannes winner Hou Hsiao-hsien (侯孝賢), best known for his art-house movies, is about to try his hand at kung fu cinema. Hou plans to start shooting the martial arts film starring Shu Qi later this year, a spokeswoman for one of the investors said. The spokeswoman added that the script was still being written and that the movie's budget hadn't been decided. She said the Taiwan branch of Hollywood studio Fox had also invested in the movie. The new kung fu movie marks a departure from Hou's examinations of Taiwanese culture. The director has shot movies about a local puppeteer (The Puppetmaster), southern Taiwan's gang culture (Goodbye South, Goodbye) and government oppression (City of Sadness). The Puppetmaster won the jury prize at the Cannes Film Festival in 1993 and City of Sadness won the top Golden Lion prize at the Venice Film Festival in 1989.
■ BANKING
New rules on credit
The central bank yesterday said it had amended regulations on how banks can handle applications by foreigners seeking credit. Under the new regulations, foreign nationals over the age of 20 are no longer required to have a residence permit to apply for a credit card. Huang A-wang (黃阿旺), a central bank official, said that this put the regulations more in line with those applying to Taiwanese, who must also be 20 years old before a bank will issue a credit card in their name. Huang said the change was made after the Ministry of Foreign Affairs said in January it would allow foreign diplomats, officials and their dependents to apply for credit cards without requiring a residence permit.
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,