■ REAL ESTATE
Tsai can't afford house price
Soaring housing prices have affected even the nation's top politicians, with the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) saying its candidate for Sinbei City could not afford to buy a house in the area. DPP Chairperson Tsai Ing-wen (齍褙湞) has come under increasing pressure from her counterpart, Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) candidate Eric Chu (髀堙袓), for failing to move into her electoral district. However, her campaign spokesperson, Hsiao Bi-khim (慬皒倗), said yesterday that Tsai simply could not afford the prices because most of the houses that she had looked at were selling for between NT$400,000 and NT$600,000 per ping (3.3m昌). Hsiao said Tsai was looking for a place that was quiet, simple and located in a safe area.
■SPORTS
Women's team off to Brazil
The national women*s volleyball team left for Brazil yesterday for the FIVB World Grand Prix. Having participated in the competition in 1994 and in 2007, Taiwan will take part in this year*s event courtesy of the withdrawal of the South Korean team. Taiwan are scheduled to play against Brazil, Italy and Japan in Sao Carlos from Friday through Sunday. The team will then fly to Japan to play against Poland, Germany and Japan on Friday and Sunday next week. The team will then return to Taipei and compete with Brazil, Poland and Puerto Rico from Aug. 20 to Aug. 22. The games in Taipei will be held at the National Taiwan University Gymnasium. Tickets are available at the gymnasium*s ticketing office.
■ SOCIETY
Woman catches 4m mozzies
A woman has taken a sizeable bite out of the mosquito population, and won a US$3,000 cash prize, by catching about 4 million of the bloodsuckers in just one month. Huang Yu-yen of Yunlin County beat 72 rivals with a catch weighing in at more than 1.5kg, said the competition organizer, Imbictus International, a company that makes insect traps. The haul was more than double that of her closest rival. The company has sent an application to Guinness World Records asking that Huang be recognized as the world*s leading killer of the pest. Mosquitoes have been a major public health hazard in the country, especially as carriers of malaria until its official eradication in 1965. One species of mosquitoes is responsible for the spread of dengue fever.
■MUSIC
Marching band wins
A Taiwanese marching band headed by students from Taipei Municipal Jianguo High School won the 2010 WAMSB Championship for Marching Show Bands in Potsdam, Germany, a team member reported yesterday. In the grand finale of the competition on Sunday, the band scored 92.58 points, edging the host band Fanfarenzug Potsdam, which had 90.44 points. The Taiwanese band also racked up the highest score of 90.56 in the preliminary round of the competition lost on Wednesday. Prior to the grand finale, the Taiwanese band took part in performances and street parades on Saturday. The band is made up of students from Jianguo High School, Taipei First Girls High School, Taipei Municipal Zhongshan Girls Senior High School, Taipei Jingmei Girls High School, Taipei Municipal Bailing Senior High School and Nangang Vocational High School. This year, the WAMSB Championship included 27 teams from 12 countries.
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