WEATHER
Mercury drops in cold snap
Temperatures began to drop yesterday afternoon because of an approaching continental Arctic air mass moving in from China, the Central Weather Bureau said. The mercury in northern Taiwan was forecast to dip to 10oC today and tomorrow after hitting a high of 19oC over the weekend, with showers expected in mountainous areas, meteorologists said. The cold front was expected to bring temperatures down to as low as 11oC in central parts of the nation today and tomorrow morning and between 12oC and 13oC in the south, after having risen above 20oC recently in both areas. The cold spell was expected to subside by Wednesday before another cold front arrives on Jan. 28, the bureau said.
ANIMALS
Pet food meets standards
Random checks on animal food last year found no safety violations, a Council of Agriculture official said yesterday. Hsu Kuei-sen (許桂森), director of the Animal Industry Department, said that to safeguard animal health, his department conducted the checks on 402 samples, of which 313 were for dogs and 89 were for cats. Hsu said that among the tests, one for aflatoxin — a toxic and highly carcinogenic substance — was conducted on all 402 pet foods. “The results showed that aflatoxin levels in all of the tests were below the international norm of 20 parts per billion,” Hsu said. He also said the results of random checks on 50 samples for salmonella and T-2 toxins, on 51 of them for melamine and on 31 of them for heavy metals also met international standards.
SOCIETY
Poor woman returns money
A woman in Yilan County returned a backpack containing more than NT$1 million (US$34,350) in cash to the person who lost it despite her family’s financial woes, police said on Saturday. Yang Huang Mu-dan (黃牡丹), who collects recyclable materials for a living, found a backpack at a temple early on Saturday morning that contained NT$1.1 million. She took the money to a police station after discussing the authenticity of the bills with her daughter, arriving there just as the person to whom the money belonged was at the station on the verge of bursting into tears. “I was pretty tempted to take it when I picked up that much money,” said the 67-year-old Yang, who has an income of about NT$10,000 a month and a jobless son. She decided to return the money, however, because she thought the owner would be anxious and could lose his or her job. Yang also refused to take 3 percent of the money as a reward, which she was entitled to ask for, and only accepted a NT$3,000 gift for her troubles. The woman who lost the bag, who works as an accountant at a recycling company, said she put the backpack on top of the trunk of her car and then absent-mindedly drove off.
HEALTH
Holiday food leads to fat
Taiwanese are expected to gain an average of 2kg over the Lunar New Year holiday, doctors said yesterday, adding that people with chronic illnesses should adopt a restrained approach toward eating to prevent relapses. High-fat foods and a lack of exercise are the main reasons why people put on weight during the holiday season, said Chu Nain-feng (祝年豐), a professor with the School of Public Health at National Defense Medical Center. He said that during the vacation, more time is spent indoors chatting with friends and relatives, especially with bad weather, reduces people’s willingness to travel or walk outside.
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,