■ AVIATION
Lost pistol returned to Brazil
Local authorities are returning a pistol belonging to a Brazilian government security guard to its owner after it was mistakenly transported to Taiwan Taoyuan International Airport, airport police said yesterday. The Brazilian security guard reported his pistol as missing after returning home from a conference in Indonesia, where he had accompanied a Brazilian official. He asked the airlines he took to help track down the weapon, and it was eventually discovered that the suitcase containing the pistol had been inadvertently flown to Taiwan, rather than back to Brazil. Workers at the Taoyuan airport found the weapon in a suitcase under a mountain of luggage that had not left the airport, airport police said. They said the pistol is being sent back to its owner in Brazil after an investigation determined that it was not linked to any crime or intended to be used for any criminal act.
■ ENVIRONMENT
Unmanned planes unveiled
The Environmental Protection Administration (EPA) yesterday lifted the veil of secrecy surrounding two unmanned aerial vehicles it has been using for the past three years to patrol the nation’s coasts in search of illegal waste dumping. The number of cases of illegal waste dumping in the ocean has dropped from 10 in 2006 to five last year, EPA Department of Water Quality Protection Director-General Chen Hsien-heng (陳咸亨) said. The vehicles, which work in conjunction with the nation’s FORMOSAT-2 satellite, are 30 percent cheaper to operate than regular planes and can be used even in bad weather conditions, Chen said. Problems with tracking specific boats and the vehicles’ inability to deviate from set routes have been resolved over the past three years, the official added.
■ AGRICULTURE
PDAs to collect crop data
The Agriculture and Food Agency will use personal digital assistant (PDA) technology to collect data on four domestically grown crops considered “sensitive” because of their vulnerability to supply and demand imbalances, an official said yesterday. The agency plans to use PDAs to collect field data in view of the importance of establishing an accurate information database on sensitive crops to maintain a balance between supply and demand, agency official Huang Pei-hsun (黃培訓) said. This year, the agency will utilize 194 PDAs to collect data-point locations and associated information on onion, orange, Chinese date and garlic production, Huang said. The agency, in collaboration with Feng Chia University, will provide a PDA and a global positioning system device to all townships with sizable areas devoted to the sensitive crops to accurately determine the actual amount of land under cultivation.
■ INVENTIONS
Taiwan wins gold in Geneva
In its best performance to date at the International Exhibition of Inventions in Geneva, Taiwan won 21 gold, nine silver and four bronze medals, an education official said yesterday. All but one of the 35 entries Taiwan submitted won prizes at the exhibition. National Yunlin University of Science and Technology bagged two golds and two silvers for its four inventions, a university official said. At the exhibition, which was held from last Wednesday until Sunday, more than 1,000 entries were submitted by 710 participants from 45 countries. Taiwan’s award-winning inventions include brain games using six wooden building blocks, a drawing compass and digital protractor, and an umbrella with an ultraviolet sensor.
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,