CULTURE
Dihua shopper festival planned
Visitors to Taipei looking for a feel of the Lunar New Year holiday atmosphere should visit Dihua Street (迪化街) and nearby shopping districts for a shopping festival set to open later this week, Taipei City Government officials said yesterday. The city announced that the area’s Lunar New Year shopping festival would begin on Saturday and that it would run through Feb. 1, the day before Lunar New Year’s Eve. In addition to Dihua Street, which specializes in dried goods and other traditional New Year snacks, nearby areas will also be holding sales offering festival commodities.
HEALTH
Hsinchu workers fatigued
More than half the workers at the country’s largest science park are suffering from fatigue, according to the Hsinchu City Government’s Public Health Bureau. Based on the physical examination records conducted by clinics at the Hsinchu Science Park, more than 50 percent of the workers are in poor health. Excess weight, high cholesterol, high blood pressure, high triglyceride and high uric acid levels were cited as the top five problems suffered by those aged under 30. The bureau said that although fatigue, often caused by overwork or stress, poses no immediate or fatal danger, it has become a threat to the workers at the park, where hundreds of high-tech companies are located. The department suggested that high-tech workers conduct self-examinations to see whether they are suffering from fatigue. Signs include strain, headache, chest tightness, lack of appetite, poor memory, attention deficit and neck and shoulder stiffness. The best way to prevent fatigue, the bureau said, was a healthy diet, good sleep patterns, regular exercise and frequent exposure to the sun and outdoors.
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,