■ DIPLOMACY
Minister visits Panama
Minister of Foreign Affairs Francisco Ou (歐鴻鍊) left for Panama on Friday night to prepare for President Ma Ying-jeou’s (馬英九) upcoming visit to the country, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs (MOFA) said yesterday. “The foreign minister is traveling to the Central American country to make arrangements for President Ma’s visit there later this month,” MOFA Deputy Spokesman James Chang (章計平) said. “Ou will also meet with Panamanian president-elect Ricardo Martinelli to exchange views on future cooperation.” Ou will take the opportunity to thank the outgoing government for its long-term support of Taiwan and will review bilateral projects in Panama, Chang said. Ou will return to Taiwan on Thursday. Following a recent trip to Belize, Guatemala and El Salvador, Ma will head for the region again on June 29 to attend Martinelli’s inauguration and visit Nicaragua and Honduras.
■ CRIME
Student arrested over plants
A 25-year-old male graduate student was arrested on Friday on suspicion of selling tropical plants imported from countries known to be affected by a plant parasite called burrowing nematode. A Criminal Investigation Bureau report said the suspect purchased pitcher plants online from Australia and Thailand and shipped them to Japan, a non-affected area, before bringing them to Taiwan by airmail. The police said that over the past two years the suspect had sold banned pitcher plants that he advertised as “living art,” for between NT$200 and NT$5,000 each, depending on the variety. The police estimated that he had sold more than 200 plants. In a raid on Friday, the police seized around 100 pitcher plants. Under the Plant Protection and Quarantine Act, people who import banned plants could face a penalty of up to three years in prison and NT$150,000 in fines.
■ ENVIRONMENT
Rain eases drought fears
The threat of a water shortage in the south is dissipating, thanks to rain in recent days, a spokesman for Taiwan Water Corp said yesterday. With the recent monsoon rains in the Tainan area, the Nanhua Reservoir collected about 1.2 million tonnes of water on Thursday alone, the official said. Southern Taiwan had seen little rainfall this year, which prompted concerns over the impact on rice crops and water for households. “The threat of a looming water shortage will dissipate once the reservoir collects more water during the coming typhoon season, before the dry season begins again at the end of the year,” he said.
■ HEALTH
New H1N1 cases confirmed
The Central Epidemics Command Center (CECC) reported seven more swine flu cases yesterday, bringing to 44 the nationwide total of confirmed A(H1N1) flu infections. “All seven new cases were [people who] were infected on tours in Thailand,” CECC spokesman Shih Wen-yi (施文儀) said. He advised travelers to Thailand to avoid crowded indoor places such as pubs and to choose outdoor activities instead. Among the seven new cases, three were students who had gone on graduation trips, while the other four had joined group tours, he said. Shih said all the patients were in quarantine and being treated. Individuals who had come into close contact with the patients had been asked to monitor their health, he said.
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
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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