POLITICS
Wuer Kaixi invited to Japan
Former Chinese student leader Wuer Kaixi (吾爾開希) will be one of the Chinese activists invited to represent imprisoned Chinese dissident Liu Xiaobo (劉曉波) at a meeting of Nobel Peace Prize laureates in Hiroshima next month, a press report said on Wednesday. Wuer, 42, a leader of the 1989 Tiananmen Square protests in Beijing who once studied with Liu, will read a message on Liu’s behalf at the World Summit of Nobel Peace Laureates, to be held from Nov. 12 to Nov. 14, Kyodo news agency said. Liu, was sentenced to 11 years in prison last December on subversion charges after co-authoring a manifesto calling for political reform in China. He was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize on Oct. 8.
DIPLOMACY
Former Japanese PM to visit
Shinzo Abe, who served as prime minister of Japan from September 2006 to September 2007, will arrive in Taiwan for a two-day visit on Sunday on the maiden flight between Taipei Songshan Airport and Japan’s Haneda Airport, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs said yesterday. Abe’s visit will make him the second former Japanese prime minister to visit Taiwan this year, following a visit by Taro Aso in April. According to Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) Legislator Lee Hung-chun (李鴻鈞), the head of the Taiwan-Japan Parliament Member Association, Abe will meet with President Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九) and Legislative Speaker Wang Jin-pyng (王金平) during his stay.
FINANCE
New loan rules introduced
The Consumer Protection Commission (CPC) yesterday said that in the future, those who provide sufficient collateral for home or car loans would not need to provide a guarantor. CPC Consumer Ombudsman Huang Chien-lung (黃建隆) said the commission recently passed revisions to regulations governing the items that must be recorded in the standard Personal Car and Housing Loan Standard Contract. One of the most significant changes to the rules is that banking institutions must not require a debtor to provide a guarantor if he or she has sufficient collateral to cover the loan. The revisions would also protect consumers from unfair deals by allowing them to halt monetary transactions in the event that the car or home purchased is defective or has other problems not disclosed in the contract. The rules will become effective after an announcement by the Financial Supervisory Commission.
TRAVEL
Missing woman calls home
A 27-year-old Taiwanese woman surnamed Lin (林) who was reported missing in Malaysia after a serious argument with her French boyfriend called her family yesterday after being out of reach for nine days. Lin and her boyfriend arrived in Malaysia for a short vacation on Oct. 11. Friends said the couple had a quarrel which led to a break-up on Oct. 19. Lin decided to continue the trip on her own, but no one heard from her for nine days. Ministry of Foreign Affairs spokesman James Chang (章計平) said yesterday afternoon Lin’s mother received a phone call from her daughter, who is on Tioman Island 32km off the east coast of Malaysia. The Taipei Economic and Cultural Office in Malaysia had said on Wednesday that Lin was listed as missing in Malaysia and that the local police had passed her information to the International Criminal Police Organization, although departure records indicated she was still in Malaysia.
TRAVEL
MOFA issues warning
Taiwanese visiting India and Bali are advised to be alert health-wise, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs’ (MOFA) Bureau of Consular Affairs said yesterday. Cases of chikungunya fever have increased in the New Delhi area over the past two weeks, while the city is also battling a dengue fever epidemic. Meanwhile, Bali is trying to bring a rabies epidemic under control, the bureau said. Visitors to these areas are advised to check information on the Centers for Diseases Control Web site, the bureau said.
ENVIRONMENT
Spoonbills begin to arrive
A total of 347 black-faced spoonbills had arrived in Tainan County’s wetlands as of Wednesday, the Wildlife Conversation Institute of Tainan County said. The first of the endangered species to arrive was observed on Sept. 26, about one week later than usual because of Typhoon Fanapi, said Chiu Jen-wu (邱仁武), chairman of the institute. The birds migrate each autumn from northern China and the Korean Peninsula, with some choosing to spend the winter on wetlands near Tainan’s Zengwen River (曾文溪) estuary. By Oct. 16 there were 68 spoonbills. Now that the northeasterly monsoon winds are stronger, the numbers could reach 500 by Sunday and peak next month, Chu said.
POLITICS
Pledges met in miniature
Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) Sinbei City mayoral candidate Eric Chu’s (朱立倫) supporters have been busy in the past two weeks making some of his key promises come to life — in miniature form. They have crafted a miniature version of the to-be-formed Sinbei City using more than 30,000 Lego bricks, including a functioning rail system representing Chu’s pledge to expand the area’s MRT system.
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,