CHARITY
Golf players sought
The European Chamber of Commerce Taipei (ECCT) and International Community Radio Taipei (ICRT) are looking for players to participate in the 2009 ECCT/IRCT International Charity Cup on April 30. The annual tournament will be held at the Miramar Golf and Country Club. The cost is NT$24,000 for a team of four. The cost covers green fees, caddies, prizes and an awards dinner at the American Club. Players of all levels are welcome. The fee for attending the dinner without competing in the tournament is NT$1,000. More information is available on the ECCT’s Web site at ecct.com.tw or by phone at (02) 2836-8134, or call Ms Elaine Liu at the ECCT on (02) 2740-0236 ext 17. Proceeds from the tournament will go to the Community Services Center.
SOCIETY
Taipei school to hold gala
Taipei European School (TES) welcomes members of the international community to attend its Black and White Gala Evening on Saturday. The annual dinner will feature live music by a jazz band from the high school, an auction and a silent auction of items including works by artists Yang Tze-yun, Patrick Lee and British sculptor Martyn Barratt. Gala goers can also take part in a raffle. The champagne reception begins at 6:30pm and the bar opens at 8:30pm. For more information, e-mail Lyndall Taylor at lyndall.mtaylor @ gmail.com. The fee is NT$2,500 per person and NT$25,000 for a table for 10.
LECTURES
Cultural center arranges lecture on Freud
The German Cultural Center and the Lung Ying-tai Foundation are inviting the public to a lecture on Saturday with Jane McAdam Freud, great granddaughter of psychiatrist Sigmund Freud. She will discuss Freudian psychoanalysis and art. The event will be held at Zhongshan Hall near Ximending. The lecture will be in English, with interpreters available for Chinese speakers. More information is available at www.civictaipei.org or by phone at (02) 3322-4907.
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,