■ CRIME
Customs Office seizes cash
The Taipei Customs Office confiscated HK$975,000 (US$124,915) in undeclared cash from a tourist arriving from Macau at Taiwan Taoyuan International Airport on Monday, a customs officer said on Wednesday. The officer said customs officials found the money in the tourist's carry-on baggage. The maximum permitted amount that can be brought in undeclared is US$10,000 in foreign currency or NT$60,000 in local currency. The case marked Taiwan's seventh confiscation of undeclared currency. Of the seven cases, two involved local currency -- one case of NT$13.87 million and the other of NT$10.13 million in undeclared cash. Five other cases involved foreign currency, with a total of NT$26.66 million confiscated, the officer said.
■ SCIENCE
Mastodon uncovered
Fossil remains of a mastodon calf were recently discovered in the dry riverbed of Dajia River (大甲溪) near Shihkang Village (石崗) in Taichung County, sources at the Taichung Mountainview Community University reported yesterday. They also noted that the discovery marks the first time that local archaeologists have found proof that Taiwan was once home to the prehistoric elephant species, which is estimated to have existed from about 28 million years ago to 10,000 years ago. Mastodon fossils have been unearthed in the past in various areas in the Northern Hemisphere, including in northern China, Europe, and North America. However, they had never been found in this region before the recent discovery which makes the find remarkable, according to the university. The fossil teeth discovered have been verified as having belonged to a young calf that lived in the area sometime between 1.5 million and 1.8 million years ago.
■ HEALTH
TSU wants bib crackdown
The Taiwan Solidarity Union (TSU) yesterday urged the government to crack down on lead-contaminated vinyl baby bibs from China which may pose a health threat to children. TSU spokeswoman Chou Mei-li (周美里) said that US toy giant Toys "R" Us removed all store-brand vinyl baby bibs from its store shelves across the US last Friday after tests confirmed that some of the Chinese-made items contained excessive levels of lead. Some 160,000 bibs -- marketed under the Koala Baby, Especially for Baby and Kidcosmic labels -- were taken off store shelves at Toys "R" Us and Babies "R" Us outlets across the US, Chou said. A Taiwan Toys "R" Us source said yesterday that its stores had not sold any of the lead-contaminated toys that had been pulled from store shelves in the US.
■ HEALTH
Banned substance detected
A pig in Taichung County has tested positive for the antibiotic chloramphenicol, the Taichung County livestock disease control center said yesterday. The concentration of chloramphenicol in the pig was 1.44 parts per billion. Huang Kwo-ching (黃國青), director of the animal health inspection division at the bureau of animal and plant health inspection and quarantine, said chloraphnical has been banned as a feed additive since 2002. "Only one animal was found to contain chloramphenicol residue. The amount detected was minute," Huang said. The owner of the feed lot could face fines of NT$6,000 to NT$30,000 under the Veterinary Drugs Control Act (動物用藥品管理法), he said.
■ CRIME
Police nab wholesaler
A wholesaler in Taipei has been arrested for suspected distribution of counterfeit fashion goods to retailers in southern Taiwan, police sources said yesterday. Members of a police squad formed to protect intellectual property rights and crack down on commercial piracy found more than 1,000 items of fake brand-name fashion goods during a raid on a storehouse owned by the wholesaler in the Wufenpu (五分埔) shopping area in Taipei City's Songshan district, the sources said. A large amount of boutique clothing, sportswear and handbags carrying various fake brand-name labels, including Nike, Adidas, Puma, Levi's, Chanel and Burberry, were seized in the raid.
■ SHIPPING
One dead in ship explosion
An explosion yesterday afternoon killed one and wounded two foreign sailors onboard a Panama-registered cargo ship named Balticace anchored near Kaohsiung Harbor. Kaohsiung Port Authority said initial investigation suggested the explosion was caused by the ship's mechanical equipment. As of press time, the port authority was still investigating the cause of the accident.
■ CRIME
Official guilty of slander
Kaohsiung District Court yesterday ruled the Taipei City Labor Affairs Department Director Su Ying-kuei (蘇盈貴) guilty of slander in a suit filed by Democratic Progressive Party presidential candidate Frank Hsieh (謝長廷) in 2003 that charged Su of damaging his reputation. The court sentenced Su to 50 days, but given the commutation statute, it can be reduced to 25 days. The case can still be appealed.
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