WEATHER
Cold snap continues
A new cold spell gripping the nation was expected to send temperatures down to below 10°C in areas north of Chiayi from late yesterday to early today, the Central Weather Bureau said yesterday. Temperatures already dropped to 9.5°C in Danshui, New Taipei City (新北市), early yesterday, the bureau said. Daytime temperatures today are forecast to range from 13°C to 14°C in northern Taiwan, 16°C to 18°C in central Taiwan and 19°C and 21°C in southern Taiwan, it said. The intensifying cold front is also expected to bring wet weather, with the northern and northeastern regions likely to experience heavy rain, the bureau said.
SOCIETY
NTU student punished
National Taiwan University said on Monday it had punished a PhD student who purposely blocked an ambulance as it was rushing a woman to a hospital. Hsiao Ming-li (蕭明禮), who is pursuing a doctorate in history, was handed two major and two minor demerits, in addition to probation, the school’s disciplinary committee said in the statement. The 33-year-old must also undergo psychiatric counseling and treatment, the committee ruled. He was also banned from driving on campus. Hsiao’s behavior provoked public outrage and seriously harmed the school’s reputation, the committee said, especially since it took him 10 days to apologize for his action. He is accused of maliciously blocking the ambulance carrying the woman by stopping his car in the middle of the road in Sindian District (新店), New Taipei City (新北市), on Dec. 24. Video footage also shows him giving the ambulance his middle finger after he blocked it. The 86-year-old woman died before reaching the hospital, prosecutors said. Hsiao has also been charged with causing actual bodily harm and obstructing officials, as some of the ambulance workers were hurt when Hsiao forced their vehicle to make an emergency stop, the investigators added.
POLITICS
DPP expels five councilors
The Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) yesterday confirmed the expulsion of five city councilors who failed to abide by party rules during a speaker election last month. Huang Chien-huei (黃劍輝), a spokesperson for the party’s Central Executive Committee, said the five failed to follow rules on how they should vote for local speakers and deputy speakers. Rebuffed after traveling personally to meet senior party officials to plead her case, newly elected New Taipei City Councilor Adrean Lee (李婉鈺) maintained that she accidentally voted for herself and said the DPP should “give me another chance.” Another councilor held up placards outside the DPP headquarters in protest. Separately, DPP Deputy -Secretary-General Fred Hung (洪耀福) said yesterday former Tainan City mayor Hsu Tain-tsair (許添財) would likely be nominated as the party’s candidate for a legislative by-election in Greater Tainan, following William Lai’s (賴清德) election as mayor last month.
EDUCATION
Colleges cooperate
A college in Taipei has formed a cooperation program with a Chinese university to attract more Chinese students to Taiwan, its chairman said yesterday. Taipei College of Maritime Technology chairman Lin Chao-rung (林朝容) told a press conference that his school planned to help Quanzhou Normal University in Fujian Province, China, establish three new departments — shipping business management, marine engineering and navigation.
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