ARTS
Teen to perform with NSO
A 16-year-old local violinist, Tseng Yu-chien (曾宇謙), will perform with the National Symphony Orchestra (NSO) in two concerts at the National Concert Hall in Taipei tomorrow and on Saturday. Tseng is a student of the Curtis Institute of Music in the US, where he studies under musician Ida Kavafian. The young violinist was the winner of the 10th Pablo Sarasate International Violin Competition last year and took third prize in the junior section of the Yehudi Menuhin International Violin Competition in 2006. He also played a major role in a locally produced movie in August. Tseng yesterday said he was very excited about the two concerts because he would be performing under the baton of NSO resident maestro Lu Shao-chia (呂紹嘉) for the first time.
AVIATION
Nation’s accident rate falling
Taiwan’s air accident rate has been falling in recent years and if the trend continues, will drop to the global average level within three years, an aviation safety official said on Tuesday. Chang Yu-hern (張有恆), chairman of the Council for Aviation Safety, said there were four aviation accidents in Taiwan this year as the country’s 10-year record continues to fall. From 2000 to last year, Taiwan registered 1.82 air accidents per million take-offs, higher than the world average of 1.02, he said. “If the current rate can be maintained, by 2013, our record will have dropped to the world average level of 0.61,” he added. Council figures show that prior to 2008, Taiwan’s 10-year accident record was above two per million takeoffs. The decade of 1993 to 2002 saw the highest record of 3.52, followed by 2.82 for 1994 to 2003, 2.69 for 1998 to 2007 and 2.26 for 1999 to 2008. By 2001 to this year, the record had fallen to the same as 2000 to last year, according to the council.
CULTURE
Influential work named
The non-fiction work Seven Days in Heaven (父後七日) has been selected as one of the 10 most influential books in Taiwan this year by Kingstone Bookstore. The book, which in its manuscript form won first prize in the Lin Rung San Literary Awards in 2006, features a Taiwanese funeral ceremony, through which the author, Essay Liu (劉梓潔), tells how a -collectivist-dominated society can strongly bind an individual, Kingstone commented. Liu has also revised her book into a screenplay to show her experience of death and local funeral rites on the big screen. The film, which bears the same title as the book, made its debut in Taiwan in August and won this year’s Golden Horse Film Award last month for best screenplay adaptation.
ENVIRONMENT
Low-carbon plan ready: EPA
The Environmental Protection Administration (EPA) said yesterday that it has come up with a national plan to create a low-carbon environment to fight global warming. The plan includes using clean energy, building a low-carbon economy and designing eco-friendly homes, the EPA said. Next year, every municipality will have two model green communities and the number of such communities will be increased gradually, said Lu Hung-kuang (呂鴻光), executive secretary of the eco-community project. The EPA proposes expanding the low-carbon plan throughout the entire country in three stages between next year and 2020, he said. Development of a low-carbon environment involves changes in areas such as energy conservation, architecture, transportation and environmental protection, which all form a challenging undertaking, Lu said. Taiwan has set a goal of reducing its carbon emissions to 2005 levels by 2020 and to 2000 levels by 2025.
DEFENSE
Volunteer duty set for 2015
Taiwan will introduce an all-volunteer military system in 2015, the Ministry of National Defense (MND) said yesterday. To pave the way for the new system, the ministry will begin a policy assessment process on Saturday that will be completed by the end of 2014, said Chao Ke-ta (趙克達), head of the Department of Manpower, during a hearing held by the legislature’s Foreign and National Defense Committee. Asked whether a planned exchange of visits between China’s People’s Liberation Army and US military officials next month will affect US arms sales to Taiwan, Deputy Minister of National Defense Andrew Yang (楊念祖) said the ministry is “cautiously optimistic” about the sales and believes they will not be affected. According to Yang, high-ranking US officials have on many occasions told Beijing that the issue of arms sales to Taiwan does not fall within the scope of US-China exchanges. Washington will consider whether to sell certain weapons to Taiwan based on the defense needs of Taiwan and the West Pacific, Yang said.
TRANSPORTATION
MRT ridership passes 500m
The annual ridership of the Taipei Mass Rapid Transit (MRT) system was expected to top 500 million passengers yesterday, marking a new chapter in Taiwan’s MRT services since the system’s inception in 1996, the Taipei Rapid Transit Corp (TRTC) said. As of Monday, the Taipei MRT system posted a ridership total of 498 million passengers this year, according to the TRTC, operator of the MRT. Expanding from one route in March 1996, the Taipei MRT system now encompasses 10 routes connecting many districts in the greater Taipei area, with 93 stations and a service length exceeding 100km.
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,