■ DIPLOMACY
Wu awards US friends
Taiwan's representative to the US Joseph Wu (吳釗燮) bestowed some of the nation's top honors on several former and incumbent US government officials, members of Congress and academics last week in recognition of their unyielding support for Taiwan and promotion of stronger US-Taiwan relations. On behalf of President Chen Shui-bian (陳水扁), Wu presented the Order of Propitious Clouds with Grand Cordon to former representative Trent Lott, who has served as a co-chairman of the Senate’s Taiwan Caucus. He also bestowed the Order of Brilliant Star with Grand Cordon on representatives Tim Johnson and Jim Inhofe, both of whom are members of the Senate’s Taiwan Caucus. The Order of Brilliant Star with Grand Cordon was also awarded to four members of the Taiwan Caucus in the House of Representatives: Steve Chabot, Dana Rohrabacher, Shelley Berkley and Robert Wexler.
■ DIPLOMACY
Wang lists challenges
Legislative Yuan Speaker Wang Jin-pyng (王金平) said yesterday that the new government will be facing four tough challenges concerning national development, but that if it succeeded in settling cross-strait problems, it would surmount those challenges. Wang made the remarks in a speech during a workshop at National Cheng-chi University’s Graduate Institute of Development Studies. The challenges include the nation’s bids to join international and regional economic organizations as a full member despite China’s obstruction and balancing spending and revenue, Wang said. The other challenges are the stagnant cross-strait exchanges in the absence of formal ties between the two sides and social problems including political and ethnic conflicts, as well as an increasing gap between the rich and the poor, Wang said.
■ EVENTS
Last chance to see blossoms
The Changhua County Government is offering the public a last chance to view the county’s tung blossoms before the season comes to an end later this month, an official said yesterday. The white tung blossoms, which have a deep connection with Hakka culture, are in season between April and May and are usually celebrated alongside Hakka culture and delicacies. The official of the county government’s Cultural Affairs Bureau said the blossoms could be seen in many places in the county, especially in mountainous areas such as Bagua Mountain and in Yuanlin township (員林) and Fenyuan township (芬園), the official said. Some trails have been built around the tung trees by local residents to provide convenience for tourists.
■ TOURISM
Delegation heads for Fuzhou
A delegation of Kinmen County Government officials and tourism industry representatives left yesterday to attend a cross-strait economic and trade exhibition and conference set to open in Fuzhou City, Fujian Province today. The 60-plus delegation, led by Lu Chih-huei (盧志輝), chief secretary of the county government, will be promoting Kinmen specialty products and the local tourism industry at the five-day gathering. Tourism representatives from Taiwan and the outlying islands of Penghu and Matsu will also be among the 2,000-plus participants in the economic and trade conference and exhibition, which is being held for the 10th consecutive year.
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