■TRAVEL
BTCO to stop passport work
From May 17, UK passport applications for British nationals will no longer be handled by the British Trade and Cultural Office (BTCO) and will need to be sent directly by the applicant to a regional passport processing center in Hong Kong, the UK’s representative office in Taiwan announced yesterday. The office will no longer accept passport applications from British nationals, said the BTCO, Britain’s official authority in Taiwan in the absence of bilateral diplomatic ties. Previously, the BTCO acted as a middleman for British passport applications in Taipei, accepting the applications, sending them to the issuing authorities in Hong Kong, and then issuing the passport to the applicant. The BTCO said the changes are part of a global initiative to streamline the issuance of passports overseas. The Passport Processing Center in Hong Kong, which will produce and return passports directly to applicants in Taiwan, aims to issue all new passports within 10 working days, the office said. If British nationals need to travel urgently, however, the BTCO will still be able to issue emergency travel documents.
■ WATER
Kaohsiung set for rationing
Water rationing measures might be implemented in Kaohsiung from late next month because of a serious drought in the southern part of the country, Water Resources Agency (WRA) officials said yesterday. WRA Director-General Yang Wei-fu (楊偉甫) said the WRA had expected normal water supplies to continue into mid-June in the Kaohsiung and Pingtung areas and late June in the Tainan area. However, water reserves in southern Taiwan are diminishing faster than expected, with almost no rainfall in the Kaohsiung and Pingtung areas in recent months, Yang said. If the drought continues, water rationing measures will have to be enforced in Kaohsiung beginning late next month, he said, urging residents to conserve water.
■ TOURISM
Alishan flower visitors down
Road damage has taken a heavy toll on travel services in the Alishan area, causing the number of visitors to the mountain resort during this year’s spring flower season to drop to a 27-year low, according statistics released by the Alishan Highway Toll Station show. The statistics showed only 102,853 people visited the Alishan National Scenic Area between March 15 and Thursday, the lowest number for the period since the inauguration of the Alishan Highway in 1983. A toll station official attributed the low number mainly to the suspension of services on the Alishan alpine railway in the wake of Typhoon Morakot in August last year.
■ ESPIONAGE
Man indicted for spying
A Taiwanese businessman was indicted by the Shihlin Prosecutors’ Office on Thursday on suspicion spying for China, according to the indictment released the same day. Ho Chih-chiang (何志強), a China-based Taiwanese businessman, was recruited by China’s national security authorities in 2007 to collect Taiwanese national security secrets in return for financial subsidies and other privileges, the indictment said. Ho returned to Taiwan and tried to recruit a Taiwan National Security Bureau officer to serve as a spy and collect information related to the government’s policies on Falun Gong, Tibetan independence, Japan and diplomacy, between December 2008 and February this year it said. Ho was indicted on charges of bribery and of violating laws on national security and the protection of national secrets.
AGENCIES
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