■SCIENCE
Astronomy exhibit to open
The National Taiwan Democracy Memorial Hall announced yesterday that it would hold a one-month astronomy exhibition next month as part of the world’s celebration of the International Year of Astronomy 2009. “The exhibition will take visitors on a galactic adventure that is full of surprises,” the institution said in a statement. The exhibition, called “2009 Scientific Season: 400 Years of Observing the Universe,” will be held from Aug. 8 to Sept. 13. It will be composed of several theme rooms, including “galaxy passage,” “stories of the sky” and “astronomy history hall,” the organizer said. Admission to the exhibit is free. Visit www.astronomy2009.tw for more information.
■ANIMALS
Volunteer training opens
The Council of Agriculture is seeking volunteers for its animal protection volunteers training program, which will be held from this month to September. There are four kinds of training programs: entry-level and mid-level classes, a study group for professional managers of volunteers and a seminar on promoting effective communication between volunteers and coordinators. Visit the Chinese-language Web site volunteer.apatw.com/index.html for more information.
■CRIME
Technician killed in Luzon
A Taiwanese agricultural technician working at a farm in Pangasinan province on the Philippine island of Luzon was allegedly stabbed to death on Thursday by a Filipino worker on the same farm, Philippine police said yesterday. According to an initial investigation by authorities, 60-year-old Chou Guang-liang (周光亮) from Taiwan, employed as a technical consultant by Harbest Agribusiness Corporation, was allegedly stabbed to death by a 24-year-old suspect, Roel Palikpik. A female employee at Harbest told the Central News Agency that Chou began working on the Pangasinan farm on Tuesday after being transferred by the company from a farm in Cavite province south of Manila. She said Chou staggered into the office on Thursday morning asking for help. Blood poured through his hands as he covered his chest. “No one witnessed the incident, and the suspect was arrested at a bus stop near Dagupan, preparing to flee to the countryside,” she said. Chou was proclaimed dead after being rushed to a hospital for emergency treatment. It is believed that Chou and the suspect were co-workers on the Cavite farm and that Chou told other workers that there was long-standing enmity between them.
■ENVIRONMENT
Billions of bottles consumed
Statistics compiled by the Environmental Protection Administration showed that consumers in Taiwan buy about 4.6 billion beverages in polyethylene terephthalate (PET) plastic containers annually, an average of 200 bottles per person. Strung together, the bottles would circle the island 223 times and circle the globe 6.3 times, local environmentalists said on Friday. Bottled tea held the biggest share of beverages sold in plastic bottles, about three times the 1.1 billion bottles of mineral water sold annually in Taiwan. But it is the sale of bottled water that has particularly raised environmentalists’ ire. They urged local consumers to stop buying bottled water and instead drink boiled tap water using their own cups or containers, especially as the idea of rejecting bottled water is gaining momentum in the international community. Environmental activists contended that bottled water, though transparent, actually represents black crude oil.
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,