TRAVEL
Port arrivals skyrocket
Visitor arrivals at the ports of Keelung, Taichung and Kaohsiung have skyrocketed this year because of the introduction of direct marine transport across the Taiwan Strait at the end of 2008, the Ministry of Transportation and Communications said. Statistics from the ministry suggested all three ports have seen huge rises in the number of visitor arrivals, mostly from China. Prior to the signing of the cross-strait sea transport agreement in December 2008, vessels had to transit via a third place before sailing to Taiwan. Through the first 10 months of this year, the number of visitor arrivals at the three major ports in northern, central and southern Taiwan totaled 420,000, 61,000 and 19,000, respectively, representing increases of 16 percent, 44 percent and 340 percent compared to the same period of last year.
SOCIETY
Ministry unveils baby ads
The government earlier this week unveiled three TV commercials that it hoped would encourage more marriages and childbirths as the country’s birth rate — already the lowest in the world — and number of marriages continue to decline. The Ministry of the Interior released one video to urge couples to get married and the other two encouraging married women to raise children. The nation’s total fertility rate last year fell to one, meaning each woman aged 15 to 49 would on average bear one baby during her lifetime. The number of new marriages also fell dramatically to 117,099 last year, a decrease of 37,767 from a year earlier, the ministry said. The ministry also recently organized group blind dates for single government workers in an effort to encourage marriages.
EDUCATION
Dominican chairs faculty
Albert Linton Charles, an academic from the Caribbean nation of the Commonwealth of Dominica, recently gained public attention after becoming a department head at National Pingtung University of Science and Technology. Charles, 34, was appointed chairman of the school’s Department of Tropical Agriculture and International Cooperation in August, becoming the first foreigner to head a faculty at the school in Pingtung County. Asked why he chose to remain in Taiwan after receiving his doctorate from the school in 2004, Charles, who arrived in 1999 for graduate studies, said he wanted “to help young Taiwanese people.” His studies on the anticarcinogenic and antioxidant properties of cassava, a plant native to South America and extensively cultivated in tropical and subtropical regions for its edible root, were a first in Taiwan.
SPORTS
Taroko race draws 10,000
An estimated 10,000 runners swarmed into Taroko National Park for the 11th Taroko Gorge Marathon yesterday. About 1,900 participants competed in the full 42.2km marathon, which included 294 runners from 22 foreign countries, according to the event organizer, the Chinese Taipei Road Running Association. Another 5,100 runners joined the 21km half-marathon, while the remaining 3,000 runners took part in a 5km fun run. Following the closure of the Suhua Highway the event’s organizer had asked the Taiwan Railway Administration to provide extra train cars so that runners could arrive in Hualien without a hitch. For the safety of the runners, the association said traffic control measures had also been implemented at the 190.5km marker and at the 169km marker on Provincial Highway No. 8 from 4am to 2pm.
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,