■ TRANSPORTATION
Act adds fines on MRT
The Cabinet yesterday approved an amendment to the Mass Rapid Transit Act (大眾捷運法), which says that passengers playing on the platform, stepping across the yellow warning lines and walking or running in the opposite direction on the escalators would face fines of between NT$1,500 and NT$7,500. The proposed amendment said that passengers carrying special tickets reserved for elderly citizens for which they are not eligible would be fined an amount 50 times the value of the fare. The construction, management and supervision of the light rail transit system were included in the Act to facilitate the development of the system, the amendment said.
■ POLITICS
Lee Hung-yuan resigns
Deputy Taipei County Commissioner Lee Hung-yuan (李鴻源) last night tendered his resignation after local media alleged he had had an extramarital affair with Non-Partisan Solidarity Union Legislator May Chin (高金素梅). The resignation was subsequently approved by Taipei County Commissioner Chou Hsi-wei (周錫瑋), who ordered an investigation into whether Lee was playing tennis with May during office hours. Earlier yesterday, Lee’s alleged affair with Chin was the focal point of discussion at the Taipei County Council, during which some county councilors demanded that Lee resign or else the council would suspend a review of all agenda items. Later yesterday at a separate setting, Lee told reporters that he and Chin were just good friends, but offered apology for causing trouble to Chou and the public.
■ TOURISM
Ports to exchange money
Two domestic banks will be allowed to set up temporary currency exchange counters at three of the country’s major ports to serve Chinese tour groups that are expected to arrive aboard cruise liners in the coming two months, the Central Bank said on Wednesday. The counters, to be operated in the ports of Keelung, Taichung and Hualien by the Bank of Taiwan and Mega International Commercial Bank, will allow each visitor to exchange up to 20,000 yuan (US$2,900) per transaction. To expedite the process, the banks will prepare bags that contain the New Taiwan dollar equivalent of 2,000 yuan in advance, central bank officials said. Other banks interested in operating the temporary services are also welcome to apply to the central bank for permission to do so, it said.
■ CULTURE
Branch museum redefined
The planned southern branch of Taipei’s National Palace Museum will be redefined as a floral culture exhibition hall, the museum’s chief curator said yesterday. Fielding questions at a legislative Education and Culture Committee meeting, museum Director Chou Kung-shin (周功鑫) said the focus of the Chiayi County branch had been changed and that it would now concentrate on flower-themed artworks, books and documents covering both cultural and natural history perspectives. Despite the change in its theme, Chou said, the new museum remained on schedule to open in the spring of 2012. According to a resolution passed on Feb. 26, the southern branch will collect flower-themed artworks created by Asian artists, along with artifacts featuring Asian history and lifestyles. The branch museum will also function as a major tourist attraction reflecting the diversity of Taiwan’s indigenous flora and the vitality of Taiwan’s agricultural and creative cultural industries, Chou said.
■SOCIETY
Nanny subsidies expand
The Ministry of the Interior (MOI) has relaxed the criteria for a government babysitting subsidy so that more needy parents can benefit from it, officials said yesterday. Since last April, the MOI has been providing a monthly babysitting subsidy of NT$3,000 to working parents with children under the age of two years and an annual family income of less than NT$1.5 million. However, the Cabinet recently approved an MOI proposal to expand the program to include families in which one parent is working and the other is serving time in jail or in some other correctional institution for one year or longer, doing compulsory military service or has a moderate to severe physical or mental disability, MOI officials said. The new criteria were effective retroactively to January, they said. The subsidies are geared toward parents who hire legally licensed babysitters from community babysitting programs, MOI officials said.
■SOCIETY
Charity praises Tzu Chi
Two representatives of the US-based Food For the Poor (FFP) charity on Wednesday praised the Buddhist Compassion Relief Tzu Chi Foundation as a model non-governmental organization. Jose Serra, vice president of FFP’s International Funding Department, and Jorge Benitez, vice president of FFP’s International Goods in Kind Department, met Dharma Master Cheng Yen (證嚴), founder of the Hualien-based foundation, on Wednesday. Serra and Benitez expressed their admiration for Tzu Chi’s efforts to provide aid to poor people around the world, regardless of their religion or ethnicity. They also endorsed Master Cheng Yen’s approach of teaching people to lead healthy and sound lives even in poverty.
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,