ENTERTAINMENT
Film makers hit Berlin
Seven Taiwanese film companies are taking part in a film market trade show at the Berlin International Film Festival to promote locally produced work overseas, the Government Information Office said yesterday. Production companies from more than 50 countries set up booths at the market, which started on Thursday and runs until Friday. Thousands of film distributors are expected to visit the show. The office said prominent industry insiders, festival organizers and media delegations would be invited to a Taiwanese film banquet, to be held at the Ritz-Carlton Hotel in Berlin tomorrow. Film brochures highlighting 123 Taiwanese films, including 51 dramas, six short films, 27 documentaries, nine animated films and 30 project proposals, would be distributed during the banquet.
TOURISM
Harbor sets new record
The number of visitors arriving via Taichung Harbor on a single day hit a new high yesterday as two international cruise liners docked at the harbor on the same day for the first time. Nearly 2,000 tourists from Europe and China arrived in Taichung on the cruise liners Astor and Costa Classica at 7am and 2pm respectively, setting the one-day record for inbound visitors, harbor bureau official Yu Chien-hsun (余建勳) said. The previous record was about 1,800, Yu added. The tourists visited nearby attractions Sun Moon Lake (日月潭), Lugang (鹿港)and downtown Taichung, before leaving the harbor later in the day. The number of Europeans visiting Taiwan, especially Germans, has surged recently, said travel agent Wang Hsueh-mei (王雪美), who handled a 300--person group traveling on the Astor.
SCIENCE
Chemist wins German award
Liu Ko-pin (劉國平), a chemistry researcher at Academia Sinica, has recently been granted Germany’s Humboldt Research Award in recognition of his lifetime accomplishments in research and teaching, according to the research institute. Liu is the third Academia Sinica research fellow to receive the research award from the government-funded Alexander von Humbolt Foundation, which promotes cooperation between German institutes of higher education and leading academics around the world, Academia Sinica said in a statement. Liu’s research interests are mode-specific and bond-selective chemistry, state-to-state chemical dynamics and correlation and coherence in -bimolecular/unimolecular reactions.
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