■ POLITICS
Calendar causes stir
Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) Legislator Hsueh Ling (薛凌) yesterday drew attention to a calendar for next year produced by Taoyuan County Council bearing the signatures of council speaker Tseng Chung-yi (曾忠義) and vice speaker Chou Yi-shen (邱義勝) that had Oct. 1 marked as National Day and July 1 as “Reunification Day.” Both Tseng and Chou are members of the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT). Hsueh said Taiwan’s National Day is Oct. 10, and Oct. 1 is China’s. Reunification Day could be referring to the KMT’s timetable for unification with China, he said. The calendar has been produced as a gift for Taoyuan residents, the legislator said.
■CULTURE
Minister showcases expo
Visitors can enjoy traditional theater, gourmet, games and shopping at the Taiwan Hakka Exposition to be officially launched on Saturday, Council for Hakka Affairs Minister Huang Yu-chen (黃玉振) announced yesterday. “We’ve spent more than NT$100 million [US$3 million] in planning for the exposition,” Huang told a news conference at the council yesterday. “The expo ground will be divided into 11 areas, and I assure you that you can always find something delicious, spectacular and fun there.” Visitors can learn about outstanding Taiwanese Hakkas, traditional Hakka holidays and the history of Hakkas in Taiwan. They can also buy traditional Hakka products and enjoy Hakka cuisine. “We’ve invited more than 80 Hakka businesses and more than 100 performing troupes to participate in the exposition,” Huang said. The exposition will be held at the Taipei County Hakka Museum in Sansia Township (三峽), and will last until Feb. 15. Shuttle buses will depart from nearby Yingge Railway Station and Yongning MRT station. For further details, visit:
www.hakkaexpo.com.tw.
■TRANSPORTATION
Angkor flights to resume
TransAsia Airways is scheduled to launch its first direct charter flight on Friday between Taipei and the Cambodian city of Siem Reap, the gateway to the world renowned temple complex of Angkor Wat. Far Eastern Air Transport, which in cooperation with Cambodia-based Angkor Airways used to provide regularly scheduled flights on the route, canceled the service in May because of financial difficulties. TransAsia Airways will fly 15 charter flights a month, serving only tour groups and travelers that join foreign independent travel packages offered by travel agencies. The initial response to the charter scheme, which will continue for at least a year, has been good, with the first two scheduled flights already fully booked, the representative said.
■AGRICULTURE
Jujubes sent to Canada
A 2.5 tonne batch of Chinese dates produced in Pingtung County has been shipped to Canada recently, the first fruit of this kind to be exported abroad this year, the Pingtung Department of Agriculture said yesterday. New orders for the Chinese dates, also known as jujubes, or honey dates, have also been received from China and shipments are expected to be dispatched shortly, department officials said. Meanwhile, Cheng Shuang-chuan (鄭雙銓), chief of Pingtung’s Yenpu Township (鹽埔), is scheduled to lead some 80 jujube farmers to Taipei from Friday to Saturday to boost sales of the fruit. Jujubes are poised to become the second flagship fruit from Pingtung County behind the bell fruit, which has been a good earner for Pingtung’s farmers.
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,