■ ECONOMY
Lien to lead group to China
Former Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) chairman Lien Chan (連戰) is scheduled to lead a delegation to attend a Chinese Communist Party (CCP)-KMT economic forum on Dec. 20 and Dec. 21. The CCP-KMT economic forum, initiated by Lien and Chinese President Hu Jintao (胡錦濤) and first held in 2006, is scheduled to be held in Shanghai this year, the KMT said yesterday. The party announced that Lien will leave for China on Dec. 14 and visit Tianjin and Hangzhou before attending the forum in Shanghai. Lien reached a consensus with Hu on the holding of regular KMT-CCP meetings during his first visit to Beijing in 2005. Lien stressed the importance of the KMT-CCP forum in pushing cross-strait cooperation when he attended an APEC meeting last month.
■ DIPLOMACY
Hau inks sister city pact
Taipei City has established sister city links with Ouagadougou, the capital of Burkina Faso, and will donate ambulances to help improve medical conditions there, Taipei Mayor Hau Lung-bin (郝龍斌) announced yesterday. Hau said at a signing ceremony that the two cities first established ties in 2002 during a visit to Taipei by the mayor of Ouagadougou and that the new alliance would further enhance mutual trust and facilitate partnerships between the two diplomatic allies. The two cities are expected to launch various initiatives and collaborate in areas such as public affairs management, information technology, transportation, the environment and health, Hau said. As a first step, Hau pledged that Taipei would donate four ambulances to Ouagadougou and would assist with the construction of a youth center in the African city, known for its craftsmanship, to provide a space for its culture to thrive.
■ EVENTS
Gay rights carnival today
In an effort to promote gay rights in Kaohsiung, the city government and the Gender/Sexuality Rights Association, Taiwan is organizing a carnival from 1pm to 5pm in front of the Kaohsiung Film Archive today, the association said in a press release yesterday. As gay and lesbians still face severe discrimination in society, the association hopes to promote gay-friendliness and bridge understandings between gays and non-gays through games featuring gay-related issues at the carnival. The group has chosen Kaohsiung to hold the event because it sees Kaohsiung as the city with the most diversity in southern Taiwan, and wants to use the city as a base for its gay rights campaign there. The Kaohsiung Film Archive is located at 10 Hesi Rd, Yancheng District (鹽埕), Kaohsiung City. For details, visit gsrat.net.
■ TRANSPORT
‘Duck boat’ plans delayed
The Kaohsiung City Government might not be able to introduce amphibious tourist “duck boats” before the World Games next year, a city official said yesterday. Kaohsiung City Transportation Bureau Director Wang Kuo-tsai (王國材) said his bureau had appropriated nearly NT$60 million (US$1.8 million) for purchasing the boats to diversify the leisure activities for city residents and to boost tourism during the World Games. But he said plans to build two “duck boats” were not going well and it would be “difficult to debut them before the World Games open on July 16.” The bureau first opened a tender for the “ducks” — modeled after a World War II amphibious landing vehicle — on Nov. 26, but nobody came forward, and the bureau had to open a second tender on Thursday that will close on Dec. 8.
■ TRANSPORT
First ‘green’ station opened
Taiwan Railways Administration has inaugurated its first “green” station, which will provide transportation services using state-of-the-art, eco-friendly technologies, senior administrators said yesterday. At a ceremony to celebrate the inauguration of the renovated Dalin Station in Chiayi County, Taiwan Railways Administration Director-General Frank Fan (范植谷) praised the station as a “pastiche of history and modernity.” The station’s old building, which was preserved in the renovation project, was built in 1903 during the Japanese colonial rule.The new “green” service complex is equipped with all kinds of eco-friendly technology. Fan said the complex is a 100 percent “green building,” that not only fully relies on natural ventilation and natural light, but also recycles rainwater and converts sunlight into electricity. To reduce the pollution caused by the station itself and its operations, it is also equipped with noise reducing units and air purifiers that can reduce the impact of the exhaust of diesel locomotives, he said, adding that the new complex also adopted an “overpass station” design that places the service areas over the rails, to reduce the area occupied.
■ CRIME
Infamous gunman in custody
An infamous gunman and drug trafficker who fled Taiwan 14 years ago was escorted home from the Philippines yesterday, police said. Chen Kuan-yuan (陳冠源), 52, was arrested in 1993 for smuggling heroin into the country from Thailand and possessing firearms, the Criminal Investigation Bureau (CIB) said. Chen then fled to Southeast Asia using a fake passport in 1994, before the Kaohsiung District Court sentenced him in absentia to eight years and two months in prison, CIB officials said. In November 1998, Chen was arrested in the Philippines for threatening others with a gun and has since been held by Philippine authorities, the officials said. Efforts by Taiwanese police to have Chen sent back to the country were unsuccessful until a model for cooperation between the two nations’ law enforcement agencies was established recently, they 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