■ CRIME
School blackmailed
Tunghai University in Taichung City suspended the campus water supply yesterday morning after a blackmailer threatened to poison the school’s supply network. The school administration had received a threatening letter on Thursday, demanding NT$5 million (US$150,800) and 2.5kg of gold. After reporting the threat to the police on Thursday, the university yesterday received a telephone call from the blackmailer, who threatened to poison its water supply system if it refused to pay. The police said they found a fingerprint on the envelope that had been used to mail the letter and were investigating. The water supply is expected to be re-established on Monday, the school said. The school’s Department of Environmental Science and Engineering will monitor the campus’ water quality over the weekend, it added.
■TOURISM
Chinese flock to Taipei 101
The number of Chinese tourists visiting Taipei 101, the world’s tallest occupied skyscraper, has risen sharply with the influx of sightseers from China, a Taipei 101 official said. Taipei 101 acting chairman and president Harace Lin (林鴻明) said that in the middle of last month alone, Chinese tourists made 17,000 visits per week to the landmark building, about seven times more than in the past. Lin said that prior to last July, the number of Chinese visitors to Taipei 101 was several thousand per month, but the number began to climb in October. Seven out of 10 Chinese visitors want to go to the observatory on the 89th floor to get an aerial view of the metropolis, Lin said.
■ENVIRONMENT
Battery recycling expanded
An additional 2,000 collection points for used batteries have been set up in public bathrooms around the country, making it more convenient for people to return used batteries for recycling, the Environmental Protection Administration (EPA) said yesterday. The bathrooms in government agencies, public enterprises, libraries, hospitals, cultural and recreational establishments and transportation facilities were selected because they are heavily frequented venues, EPA officials said. The EPA said Taiwan produces or imports approximately 9,000 tonnes of batteries every year. Last year 5,470 tonnes of used batteries, or 60 percent of new battery production and imports, were returned for recycling, exceeding the target of 45 percent that the EU hopes to reach by 2016, the officials said. Used batteries are also collected at supermarkets, hypermarkets, convenience stores, drug and cosmetic chain outlets and retailers of mobile phones and cameras.
■SOCIETY
Voucher deadline passes
Less than 1 percent of Taiwanese did not pick up their government-issued consumer vouchers as of Thursday’s collection deadline, the state-owned Chunghwa Post Co reported yesterday. The company said 134,974 people, or 0.58 percent of Taiwan’s total population, did not collect the NT$3,600 in vouchers the government issued in mid-January for each citizen as part of a stimulation package to boost the domestic economy amid the global economic downturn. The remaining vouchers will be sent back to the Ministry of the Interior, which will be responsible for destroying them after May 12, a Chunghwa Post executive said. Ministry data indicated that as of April 20, more than NT$65.53 billion (US$2 billion), or 78.26 percent of the total of NT$83.73 billion in vouchers issued, had been cashed.
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
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,
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