SOCIETY
Peak ATM hours announced
The Consumer Protection Commission yesterday said peak hours for cash withdrawals from ATMs would be mornings and afternoons from today until Thursday, and advised customers to check with their banks on daily limits for withdrawals and transfers. The commission said the hours between 11am and 2pm, and 5pm and 7pm during the two days prior to the start of the Lunar New Year holiday, as well as the first two days of the New Year, would be peak hours for ATM use. People seeking to avoid standing in line should avoid these times. Customers should also avoid using ATMs they have never used before and keep the printed receipts in case the machine malfunctions.
TRANSPORTATION
Scooter statistics released
The area formerly known as Kaohsiung County ranked No. 1 in terms of the number of scooters per 100 residents last year, while Taipei posted the lowest number, according to a statement released by Directorate--General of Budget, Accounting and Statistics. Last year, for every 100 Kaohsiung County residents, there were 83 scooters on average, the statement said, which cited the Ministry of Transportation and Communications. Taipei reported a scooter ownership rate of 41.8 percent, the statistics showed. Meanwhile, more motor vehicles were registered last year, with scooters showing the biggest increase from a year earlier, the statistics showed. A total of 21.72 million motor vehicles were registered last year, up 1.6 percent from 2009. The number of scooters registered rose 1.7 percent to reach 14.85 million in the same period, the report said. Last year, 6.88 million cars and pickup trucks were registered, a 1.6 percent increase from the previous year.
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,