■ SOCIETY
California hotline set up
Taiwan's government has set up a special hotline at 002-1-213-446-5008 for people in need of information on friends and relatives caught up in the wildfires blown by fierce winds that have forced hundreds of thousands of people in southern California to flee, Phoebe Yeh (葉非比), acting deputy Director-General of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs said yesterday. The ministry's staffers in the US have visited Taiwanese affected by the fires at a resource center in San Diego and they all remain safe, Yeh said. Minister of Foreign Affairs James Huang (黃志芳) has sent a message to California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger to express the support and best wishes of the government and the Taiwanese people, Yeh said.
■ ASTRONOMY
Fullest moon to appear
The fullest moon of this year will appear tonight, according to astronomers in Taipei. Astronomers at the Taipei Astronomical Museum said the moon will become full at 12:52pm today, and that at 8pm members of the public will be able to look east at a 35o angle to view the fullest moon of the year. At that time the Moon will reach the closest point to Earth of its orbit. Today's moon will be 14 percent larger than the smallest full moon of this year, seen on April 3, when the moon was farthest from the Earth, the astronomers said. The full moon today is also expected to be 30 percent brighter than lesser full moons seen earlier in the year.
■ ENVIRONMENT
Hsieh wants `wetland bank'
Democratic Progressive Party presidential candidate Frank Hsieh (謝長廷) proposed a "wetland bank" concept yesterday, suggesting that efforts be made to conserve and restore the nation's wetlands. Efforts should be made to systematically research and plan wetland conservation and restoration so that wildlife habitats can be conserved and the sustainable development of wetlands can be secured, Hsieh said. Some of these efforts could be commissioned to NGO groups, he said. Noting that conserving the environment is a move that reflects "the power of progress," Hsieh said Taiwan should seek to link itself to the "global power of progress" and make the nation a stronghold of this concept. Hsieh made the remarks during a ceremony held in Taipei to mark the inauguration of the NGO group Taiwan Ecological Engineering Development Foundation.
■ CRIME
Ko held for insider trading
Venture capital mogul Ko Wen-chang (柯文昌) and two associates have been detained for alleged insider trading, a prosecutor said yesterday. Ko, chairman of leading capital firm WK Technology Fund, and company executives Ho Cheng-chin (何正卿) and Lee Rung-hsun (李榮勳) were arrested on Wednesday after prosecutors raided the company, said Lin Jinn-tsun (林錦村), a spokesman for the Taipei District Prosecutors' Office. They were suspected of making illegal profits of up to NT$900 million (US$27 million) through the acquisition of Green Point Enterprises Co by US-based Jabil Circuit Inc, Lin said. WK Technology Fund allegedly purchased a large amount of shares in Green Point between July and December last year before Jabil Circuit, a maker of printed circuit boards, announced in January that the merger was completed. Ko, dubbed the "godfather of venture capital" by local media, also faces perjury charges for allegedly destroying evidence related to the case, the prosecutor said.
■ CRIME
Official sentenced to jail
Taipei judges yesterday sentenced Vice Chairman of the Straits Exchange Foundation Chang Chun-hung (張俊宏) to 11 years in prison for embezzling funds from Formosa Telecom Investment (全民電通投資公司) during his time as company president in 1996. Chang, also a former Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) legislator, was charged with violating breach of trust, the Business Accounting Law (商業會計法) as well as the Securities Transaction Law (證券交易法). Chang said yesterday he was unsure whether he would appeal the verdict. The company was established by Chang and other DPP members in 1996 to fund Formosa Television (FTV, 民視). Chang reportedly raised NT$3 billion (US$90 million) from 15,000 investors, but only NT$1 billion was used for FTV.
■ HEALTH
New tumor treatment found
A new autoimmune treatment for brain tumors has been developed by the Taichung-based China Medical University Hospital, with a survival rate of 85.8 percent. Neurosurgery department director Cho Der-yang (周德陽) said yesterday the new therapy employs dendritic cells extracted from a patient's blood to fight malignant glioma cells in the brain to minimize side effects and increase the chances of survival. Cho said the dendritic cells are cultivated in vitro with malignant glioma cells, a process that "teaches" dendritic cells to recognize the malignant cells and trigger immune mechanisms. "Educated" dendritic cells are then injected back into the patient to stimulate his T-lymphocytes, which fight the remaining malignant cells. "A single course of treatment takes six months and 10 injections," Cho said.
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