SOCIETY
Memorial for TAS teacher
The Taipei American School (TAS) in Tienmu (天母) will hold a memorial service in honor of drama and English instructor Robert Bishop, who died on Tuesday (Oct. 12) from injuries he suffered after being struck by a car the previous week. The service will be held in the school’s auditorium, starting at 3:30pm on Monday, and is open to the community. Bishop had taught at TAS since 1998 and was a major force in the school’s drama program, having produced or directed Pirates of Penzance, Pippin, Return to the Forbidden Planet and Turandot, among his many other theatrical projects. His final production, Animal Farm will be performed next weekend (Oct. 22-23). He is survived by his daughters Caty and Sophie, who are both TAS graduates.
HEALTH
Workers eat unhealthy diets
The nation’s workers consume too much fried food and soft drinks high in sugar, especially blue-collar laborers, high-tech engineers and civil servants, and these workers therefore have bigger than average waistlines, according to the results of a survey released by the Chinese Federation of Dieticians Association. The results show that the main course of a meal for many of those polled is mostly fried and that workers also consume too many soft drinks. They do not eat enough fruits or vegetables, with only four workplaces providing fruit or brown rice, said Chin Hui-min (金惠民), chairman of the association.
ECONOMY
MOEA anticipates Y2K 2.0
The Ministry of Economic Affairs will set up four emergency task forces to help Taiwanese businesses deal with a potential computer glitch that could occur as the Republic of China (ROC) enters its 100th year next year. The task forces will operate around the clock from Dec. 1 to Jan. 31 next year, said Wu Ming-chi (吳明機), -director-general of the ministry’s Department of Industrial Technology, yesterday. The problem, known as the “centenary bug, “ is similar to the Y2K bug that caused panic prior to the start of 2000 until it turned out to be a false alarm. The ministry is afraid that there could be a problem in this case, because in older computer systems, the year on the ROC calendar is presented in two digits and there is concern that these systems might not be able to cope with three-digit years. According to the results of a survey conducted by the ministry among local businesses in August, more than 70 percent of the respondents had already updated their systems to prevent the glitch.
SOCIETY
Public satisfied with services
The nation’s public has given the government a satisfaction rating of 77.6 percent in terms of the quality of public services provided, with police services given the lowest rating, the latest government survey has found. The survey, commissioned by the Research, Development and Evaluation Commission and conducted between Sept. 28 and Sept. 30, collected responses from a total of 1,087 adults and had a sampling error of plus or minus 2.97 percentage points. It showed that respondents were most pleased with household registration services, such as registering marriages, giving them a satisfaction rating of 95.1 percent. Three other public services enjoyed satisfaction ratings of more than 90 percent. They were the mass rapid transit systems (94.2 percent), the Taiwan High Speed Rail (93.3 percent) and public arts and cultural institutions (90.1 percent). Police and employment services got the worst satisfaction ratings, 68.9 percent and 69.3 percent.
HEALTH
Ear wax may indicate issue
Excessive ear wax could be an indicator of a developing ear problem, a doctor at the Renai Branch of Taipei City Hospital said on Thursday. Chang Chia-wei, a resident at the hospital’s ear, nose and throat department, cited the case of a nine-year-old girl who had excessive ear wax production in her left ear and was later diagnosed with keratosis obdurans, a build up of extra skin cells in the ear canal leading to blockage and a decrease in hearing. Chang said that 70 percent of the cases occur in teenagers and although only one or two are diagnosed each year, people should not overlook ear disease, which can reoccur and cause irreparable hearing damage.
ENVIRONMENT
US$5,000 donated to rhinos
Taiwan has donated US$5,000 to Save the Rhino International, a UK-based foundation, in a bid to help protect endangered wildlife in Indonesia. Katharine Chang (張小月), Taiwan’s representative to the UK, presented a check in London on behalf of the Forestry Bureau to Cathy Dean and Lucy -Boddam-Whetham, director and fundraising manager of the foundation. The economic exploitation of rhino habitats and human poaching have caused a catastrophic decline in rhino numbers, Chang said, adding that there are less than 200 Sumatran rhinos left in the wild. The government was touched by the foundation’s efforts, Chang said. Save the Rhino has been working to save populations of critically endangered rhinos in Africa and Asia since 1994. Dean expressed gratitude to Chang for sponsoring the Rhino Protection Unit Program, which aims at conserving animals in Bukit Barisan Selatan National Park in Indonesia.
RECREATION
Jiaming Lake to reopen
Jiaming Lake (嘉明湖), a popular hiking spot in eastern Taiwan, will reopen to the public early next month after being closed for more than a year following a major typhoon. The 11.5km trail linking the Siangyang National Forest Recreation Area and the lake was seriously damaged in August last year by Typhoon Morakot, which claimed more than 700 lives. The high-altitude lake at Yushan National Park will be open to 70 visitors per day to avoid disturbing the restored serenity in the area, the Forestry Bureau’s Taitung District Office said. People who are interested can apply for entrance online with the office.
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