AID
More donations for Thailand
The government has donated US$1 million to Thailand to help with the country’s flood relief efforts, Premier Wu Den-yih (吳敦義) said on Tuesday, adding that the government made the decision after hearing a report by Chung Chien (鍾堅), a National Security Council councilor who had visited Taiwanese businesspeople in the kingdom. The donation will be on top of a US$100,000 contribution made last month in the wake of the country’s worst flooding in 50 years. The Thai-Taiwan Business Association and other expatriate groups in Thailand have raised NT$11.2 million that will be donated to help with its relief and rescue efforts. Thailand has also received more than NT$1.62 million from Taiwanese and Thai nationals living in Taiwan, the Thailand Trade and Economic Office in Taipei said on Monday.
SOCIETY
Final push for Yushan vote
Yushan National Park Headquarters urged the public to step up voting for Yushan as one of the world’s “New 7 Wonders of Nature” before the contest ends tomorrow. Yushan needs a massive number of votes to avoid elimination, park headquarters officials said. Yushan is among the 28 finalists in the four-stage contest that began three years ago. The mountain — the highest peak in the nation and in East Asia — has been gaining votes slowly, according to the competition Web site. The current top 10 finalists in alphabetical order are the Dead Sea in Israel, the Grand Canyon in the US, Australia’s Great Barrier Reef, Halong Bay in Vietnam, Jeita Grotto in Lebanon, Jeju Island in South Korea, Indonesia’s Komodo island, the PP Underground River in the Philippines, the Sundarbans in India and Bangladesh and Vesuvius in Italy. Votes for Yushan can be cast at http://n7w.ysnp.gov.tw or www.new7wonders.com. Cellphone users can send a text message to 55123, saying “yushan.”
HEALTH
Free hepatitis checks offered
A hepatitis-screening program will be provided to the public free of charge on Saturday at Sun Yat-sen Memorial Hall, the Liver Disease Prevention and Treatment Research Foundation announced yesterday. The program will be held on the anniversary of Republic of China founding father Sun Yat-sen’s (孫逸仙) birth in 1866. Sun died of liver disease on March 12, 1925. Sheu Jin-chuan (許金川), a doctor specializing in hepatitis, said public awareness about liver disease needed to be enhanced. “Only one-third of the 3 million hepatitis B carriers in Taiwan, for example, know about their health condition, leaving 2 million at risk of developing more serious complications,” he said, adding that regular screening was necessary to prevent late-stage diagnosis and promote early-stage detection. The program is free for all Taiwanese above the age of 26.
TRAVEL
Luggage hurts CAL plane
The passengers on a China Airlines (CAL) flight, including two Cabinet ministers, were evacuated yesterday after the plane was rammed by a luggage van on the tarmac at Taiwan Taoyuan International Airport. Passengers were boarding the aircraft when the truck ran into it. The pilot ordered passengers to evacuate and the airline deployed another aircraft for the flight to Hawaii. Minister of the Interior Jiang Yi-huah (江宜樺) and Minister of Finance Lee Sush-der (李述德), who were heading for APEC meetings in Hawaii, were among the 275 passengers. The flight eventually departed at 4pm, 90 minutes behind schedule.
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,