■POLITICS
Fu criticizes KMT delay
Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) Legislator Fu Kun-chi (傅崑萁) yesterday expressed resentment over KMT plans to suspend the primary for the Hualien County commissioner election, adding that he would continue his efforts to represent the party in the election. The KMT was scheduled to hold a primary yesterday to choose its candidate for county commissioner, but the party’s Hualien branch suspended the primary on Friday night and said the party would determine the candidate through negotiations instead. KMT Secretary-General Wu Den-yi (吳敦義) yesterday dismissed allegations that President Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九) was involved in suspending the primary to prevent Fu, who has been found guilty of manipulating share prices in two trials, from representing the party. It was reported that Ma was seeking more control over the nominations for local government elections because he allegedly plans to take over the party chairmanship next month. Fu and the other four hopefuls said they would continue campaign efforts. However, Fu urged the party to determine the candidate in a fair mechanism and declined to say whether he might withdraw from the party and run as an independent candidate.
■TOURISM
Bus accident injures nine
A bus carrying 31 Chinese tourists from China’s Fujian Province yesterday scraped against the side of a mountainous road on the way to Alishan (阿里山) in Chiayi, injuring nine passengers. The accident occurred yesterday at the 91km mark on Provincial Highway 18 (also known as the Alishan Highway) at around noon. It was reported that the driver may have been trying to avoid monkeys or goats when he scraped the bus against the mountain, police said. None of the passengers sustained severe injuries. While two of them have broken bones — including an elderly woman who broke her arm — the other injuries were restricted to scratches and minor cuts. The passengers were sent to the St Martin de Porres Hospital in Chiayi City to receive treatment. The rest of the tour group is scheduled to continue their trip.
■EVENTS
Church holds charity dinner
The Taiwan Catholic Mission Foundation will hold a charity dinner on Friday at Splendor Hotel in Taichung City to raise fund for children of foreign spouses, said Austin Ou (歐晉仁), chief executive officer of the foundation. Ou said the money would be used to fund after-school programs established by the church to provide homework help for children of foreign spouses that are struggling at school. The dinner will also feature live performances by a quartet comprised of four Filipino Catholic fathers, some children from the programs and a choir of Filipino and Vietnamese mothers. For more information, contact the foundation at (02) 2341-5260.
■EVENT
Night of the Adeaters
INFINE Cultural and Art Exchange and Alliance Francaise de Taiwan will jointly organize this year’s Night of the Adeaters on July 10 in Taichung City and July 12 in Taipei City. The organizers said that Adeaters, organized in more than 40 countries, is an annual party presenting commercials from around the world. The Taichung event will be held at Wen Ying Hall from 2pm to 10pm. In Taipei it will take place at Sun Yat-sen Memorial Hall and admission varies from NT$600 to NT$1,000 depending on the seating. For more information, visit infine-art.com/adeaters/englishindex.htm or call (02) 2742-3595.
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