■ SOCIETY
Taipei Guest House to open
The Taipei Guest House will open from 8am to 4pm to the public on Jan. 1 to coincide with a series of New Year festivities around the city, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs said yesterday. All patrons must present a picture identification card and will be admitted into the compound after a security check, the ministry said. Photography is prohibited. Taipei Guest House, completed in 1901, was originally the house of the governor-general to Taiwan during Japanese rule. The historical baroque style building is now used by the government to hold celebrations or receive guests.
■ DEMOGRAPHICS
Taiwan is 25 percent Hakka
The Council for Hakka Affairs yesterday released its latest census results, which showed that Hakka, at nearly 6 million people, accounted for 25.6 percent of the population. The number included 3.1 million people whose parents were both Hakka, 1.1 million who had at least one Hakka parent and 1.6 million who did not consider themselves Hakka, but had Hakka ancestry. “The numbers will be an important reference for the council’s future policies,” council Minister Huang Yu-chen (黃玉振) told a news conference in Taipei. Huang said that policies on the agenda included setting up special Hakka cultural regions in townships with populations that were more than 40 percent Hakka and Hakka affairs authorities in counties or cities where the Hakka population is more than 10 percent.
■ FILM
‘Red Caution’ to premiere
The first public screening of the documentary Red Caution (紅色戒嚴) will be held tonight at 7pm at Liberty Square in Taipei, the Northern Taiwan Society said yesterday. The film documents police brutality against anti-China demonstrators and other measures, considered by many as violation of freedom of expression and human rights, during China’s Association for Relations Across the Taiwan Strait Chairman Chen Yunlin’s (陳雲林) visit to the country last month. The film was shot by independent documentary directors Chen Li-kui (陳麗貴) and Chen Yu-ching (陳育青) and was funded by the Taiwan Society.
■ WEATHER
Cold front to chill New Year
Those planning to celebrate the New Year countdown outdoors may have to get ready for cold weather, as the Central Weather Bureau (CWB) yesterday forecast the arrival of a cold front on Monday. The bureau said another cold front from the north would also come later next week. Temperatures in the north and northeastern regions are likely to drop to as low as 11°C on New Year’s Eve. And there are chances of showers in mountainous areas in the north, northeast and south, the bureau said.
■ ENVIRONMENT
Penghu gives free bus rides
Free public bus rides will be available from Jan. 1 for all registered residents of Penghu County. Penghu County Commissioner Wang Chien-fa (王乾發) encouraged residents to use the free buses instead of using their cars or motorcycles to help reduce carbon dioxide emissions. The county government recently allocated NT$20 million (US$606,000) to support the initiative after several county councilors proposed that the county government provide its residents with better social welfare programs and help promote environmental protection awareness, Wang said. Students in Penghu have been allowed to ride public buses for free since Dec. 1.
■ CHARITY
Underprivileged get tickets
Taipei City Government and several enterprises donated tickets for the renowned Cirque du Soleil to underprivileged children and art students yesterday. The troupe will perform for the first time in Taiwan next month and in February. Taipei City Government donated 520 tickets to children from orphanages and halfway houses. Before its main shows, the troupe will perform the show Alegria on Jan. 13 for about 800 underprivileged people. The company’s shows usually feature acrobatics and dazzling costumes that are the hallmark of the circus, but the performances also incorporate elements of theater. Cirque du Soleil will pitch its famed Grand Chapiteau, a large circus tent that can seat approximately 2,500 spectators, on Jan. 7 in Taipei. Taiwanese fans have not balked at the high admission prices for the show, paying NT$1,900 to NT$7,000 for tickets to the shows, which are almost sold out.
■ EDUCATION
An ode for academic Kinmen
Poet Cheng Chou-yu (鄭愁予) called for concerted efforts on Thursday to turn Kinmen into an “academic island” to attract students from both Taiwan proper and China. He urged the Ministry of Education to help National Kinmen Institute of Technology (NKIT) upgrade to university status, which would serve as a bedrock for developing the former frontline island into an oasis of academia. Urging the central government to open higher education centers to Chinese students, including NKIT, Cheng said there were many young men and women in China who do not enter tertiary education institutes because there are too few places, while Taiwan’s institutes, mostly privately run, have many vacancies. Cheng said that he hoped that after NKIT was upgraded, a college of general education could be established so that students from Taiwan and China could travel to Kinmen to receive their higher education.
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,