The Taichung City Government formed a committee yesterday to promote its bid to host the 2017 East Asian Games — a multisport event held every four years.
Taichung Mayor Jason Hu (胡志強) said the city would do its best to win the right to host the event and he hoped the city’s efforts would help boost the spirits of people nationwide.
The city emerged as the nation’s representative to compete for the games after reportedly beating out Greater Kaohsiung, Taipei City, New Taipei City (新北市) and Taoyuan County in mid-January.
COMPETITION
Hu expected Ulan Bator, Mongolia, and Jeju City, South Korea, to provide the stiffest competition, before the host city is decided by the East Asian Games Association in May or June.
If Taichung is selected, Hu said, the city or even the entire nation could undergo a transformation and it would have a positive effect on the future development of sports in the greater Taichung area.
ENVIRONMENTAL
The focus of the city’s bid is to promote environmental awareness through the themes of energy conservation and carbon reduction, Hu said.
Of the nine members in the association, China, South Korea, Japan, Hong Kong and Macau have already hosted the games, and Tianjin, China, will host the sixth East Asian Games scheduled for October 2013.
The members who have yet to host the event are Taiwan, Mongolia, North Korea and Guam.
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,