■ TRANSPORTATION
Free bus trial to begin
Starting tomorrow, the Kao-hsiung City Government will begin offering free bus rides on Thursdays on a trial basis, the city government said yesterday. The city’s Transportation Bureau issued a press release saying that bus rides on the city’s 82 bus routes would be free of charge every Thursday for three months. It said the city hopes to encourage more residents to use public transportation. The city government will also offer passengers free rides on six of the city’s holiday sightseeing bus routes, including one along the city’s coast line, one to the city’s Cijin District (旗津) and one to the city’s old neighborhood in Yencheng District (鹽埕). The buses will operate every Saturday and Sunday, the bureau said. The bureau said that although both free ride schemes are expected to increase the city government’s expenditure by NT$30 million (US$988,000), the plans are expected to help reduce carbon dioxide emission by 170 tonnes.
■ POLITICS
Exam yuan may face cuts
Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) Legislator Alex Tsai (蔡正元) yesterday urged the Presidential Office to support his proposal to halve the size of the Examination Yuan. Tsai highlighted the financial benefits to the public if the Examination Yuan were downsized from 21 people to 9 people. He said the annual salary of each member of the Examination Yuan is about NT$5 million. Halving the government branch would help the government save about NT$50 million every year, he said. Given the Presidential Office’s promotion of government frugality, the Examination Yuan should also be halved “like the Legislative Yuan was,” he said. Tsai said legislators across party lines had reached a consensus regarding the proposal, but the legislature had yet to schedule the bill for a preliminary review because of opposition from the Presidential Office.
■ DIPLOMACY
Ma meets Holy See officials
President Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九) met the Holy See’s new charge d’affaires in Taiwan, Monsignor Paul Fitzpatrick Russell, and his predecessor, Monsignor Ambrose Madtha, at the Presidential Office yesterday. During the meeting, Ma said that relations between Taiwan and the Vatican have been harmonious, adding that former president Chen Shui-bian (陳水扁) visited the Holy See in May 2005 to attend the late Pope John Paul II’s funeral. Fitzpatrick Russell was named the Vatican’s new diplomatic representative to Taiwan early last month, after Madtha was named Apostolic Nuncio to Ivory Coast in West Africa. Ma said that relations between Taiwan and the Vatican were very close during Ambrose’s five-plus years as the Holy See’s representative, adding that he would be missed by everyone in Taiwan. The president also welcomed the new representative. The Vatican is the only state in Europe that diplomatically recognizes Taiwan.
■ HEALTH
Boy dies of enterovirus
A two-year-old boy in Taichung County has died of serious enterovirus infection, making him the country’s fifth victim of the disease so far this year, the Department of Health (DOH) reported yesterday. The DOH’s Centers for Disease Control was expected to hold a news conference later yesterday to announce whether an enterovirus outbreak alert would be issued with an increased response level. Enterovirus is a virus that enters the body through the gastrointestinal tract, where it thrives.
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,