Minister of Education Wu Ching-chi (吳清基) yesterday praised the moral courage of ministry inspector Daisy Hung (洪蘭) following her resignation over comments critical of medical students at the nation’s top university.
Wu said he respected Hung’s decision to quit, but that it had been unusual for her to speak about the students at the National Taiwan University’s (NTU) College of Medicine before the ministry-affiliated Taiwan Medical Accreditation Council (TMAC) publicized its evaluation of the nation’s 11 medical schools.
The council is scheduled to release its evaluation in March. It has completed its evaluation of eight schools so far.
CRITICAL ARTICLE
Hung, a member of the TMAC and a professor of cognitive neuroscience at National Central University, tendered her resignation after causing an uproar last month with an article she wrote.
Hung said she saw students arrive late for classes, doze off, eat instant noodles and drumsticks, watch videos on their laptops or send text messages during classes while she was conducting a ministry inspection of the college.
She voiced concern about the students’ attitude toward learning and their ability to compete with their counterparts in other countries.
PROTEST
NTU medical students held a conference on Monday night to discuss Hung’s criticisms. Attendees were provided with free drumsticks and pizza and encouraged to eat during the conference.
Ho Cho-fei (何卓飛), director of the ministry’s Department of Higher Education, confirmed that Hung submitted her resignation via an e-mail immediately after her criticism was aired in the media.
The council had decided not to include Hung’s evaluation of NTU in the school’s final evaluation, Ho 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
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,