CHARITY
Lai to give funds to Japan
Greater Tainan Mayor William Lai (賴清德) is scheduled to depart today on a visit to the northeastern Japanese city of Sendai, which was hit hard by a massive earthquake and tsunami on March 11. During his visit, Lai will present about NT$35 million (US$1.21 million) in donations raised by the local government and residents to Sendai Mayor Emiko Okuyama to help finance disaster relief programs, an official from the Greater Tainan Government said. Lai will also meet with the speaker of the Sendai City Council and the deputy governor of Miyagi Prefecture. Sendai, one of Tainan’s sister cities, is the prefecture’s capital. Lai also plans to visit neighboring Fukushima Prefecture. Before wrapping up his visit on Saturday, Lai will travel to Tokyo, where he will meet with executives of a Taiwanese expatriate association to discuss a plan to invite elementary-school children from Sendai to Tainan this summer for a free tour.
ENTERTAINMENT
Mayday film posts record fee
A 3D film starring Taiwanese rock band Mayday has posted a record copyright fee for its DVD release in Taiwan. The much--anticipated film reportedly earned a higher copyright fee than local blockbusters over the past few years, including Cape No. 7 and Monga, which posted about NT$8 million (US$274,860) in copyright earnings. Both films raked in over NT$200 million at the box office, a record-high figure in Taiwan’s recent film history. Deepjoy Picture Corp said it had offered an eight-figure price for the DVD and TV broadcast publication rights for the movie, titled Mayday 3DNA. The film is scheduled to hit local cinemas in September, according to its Facebook fan page.
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