SOCIETY
iPad 2 remains unclaimed
The 100 millionth electronic invoice was issued by a convenience store on Tuesday last week and the consumer that received the invoice is to be given an iPad 2, the Ministry of Finance said yesterday. According to the ministry’s Financial Data Center, invoice YG85644046 was issued at 12:30pm at an OK Mart convenience store on Dadong Road in Taipei’s Shilin District (士林). The center said the customer spent NT$140. The ministry began encouraging stores to issue environmentally friendly invoices last year and, to draw the public’s attention to the policy, the ministry decided to give away an iPad 2 to the lucky holder of the 100 millionth invoice. The center has posted a notice at the store in Shilin, but no one has come forward to collect the prize. The person with the winning invoice should contact the center on (02) 2763-1833, ext 4379, an official said.
WEATHER
Temperature plunges
New Taipei City (新北市) saw the mercury plunge to 8.4?C yesterday afternoon, with temperatures in most northern areas ranging from 10?C to 13?C, the Central Weather Bureau said. The bureau warned that the cold spell would likely continue until tomorrow, when temperatures are expected to rise to between 16?C and 22?C nationwide. Until then, the bureau said, temperatures are forecast to range from 10?C to 18?C in northern and central areas and from 11?C to 21?C in the south. By the end of the weekend, seasonal winds from the northeast are expected to bring rain to northern and northeastern areas, the bureau said.
RETAIL
Number of stores increases
According to the latest official statistics, there is one convenience store for about every 500m on average in the nation. The number of convenience stores saw an annual increase of 2 percent to 9,483 as of the end of last year, in an area that covers more than 36,000km2, according to the latest statistics released by the Fair Trade Commission. The highest density is in Taipei, officials said, adding that the densities in Hsinchu and Chiayi are also high. The commission’s statistics also show that total combined sales at all of the convenience stores reached NT$230 billion (US$7.59 billion) last year. Convenience store services have become more diverse in recent years. In addition to everyday goods, they now also sell movies, concert and sport event tickets, high-speed rail tickets and entrance tickets for leisure parks. They also provide services that range from the delivery of products bought online, taking orders for special dishes for various festivals, to allowing customers to pay their utility bills.
SOCIETY
Subsidies to be paid early
Government subsidies and allowances are to be paid early this month so that recipients will have the money before the Lunar New Year holiday, the Bureau of Labor Insurance said on Tuesday. An estimated 2.08 million people receive the payments, which include workers’ pensions, welfare allowances and subsidies to Aborigines. The payments are to be made on Jan. 16, Jan. 19 and Jan. 20 instead of Jan. 30 as is customary, the bureau said. Meanwhile, the 680,000 elderly farmers who are eligible for a pension increase from NT$6,000 to NT$7,000 per month as of this month will receive the increase on Feb. 20, the bureau said. Farmers whose non-agricultural income exceeds NT$500,000 or who own property worth more than NT$5 million will no longer be eligible for the pension, starting in January next year, the bureau said.
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