People scrambled yesterday to snap up coins sets minted to commemorate the Year of the Dragon, forming long lines outside Bank of Taiwan branches, the only bank authorized to sell the coins.
Bank of Taiwan public relations staffers said the lines of people waiting for the coins were the longest they had ever seen.
One elderly man surnamed Wu (吳), who was born in the Year of the Dragon, said he had to line up for four hours, but the coin set was worth it.
Photo: Su Chin-fong, Taipei Times
In anticipation of high demand for Year of the Dragon coins, the central bank issued 150,000 sets this year, compared with 120,000 in previous years.
Each set contains a silver NT$100 coin and two bronze coins in NT$50 and NT$20 denominations. This year’s set costs NT$2,000, up from NT$1,550 last year because of an increase in the cost of metals, the bank said.
The commemorative coins are expected to stir up a frenzy among coin collectors and their value is forecast to appreciate by about 20 percent almost immediately, said Chou Chien-fu (周建福), a coin collection expert.
On one side of the silver coin is an imprint of a dragon, which is considered a symbol of unparalleled distinction and auspiciousness.
The reverse side features an image of the Ershawan Gun Emplacement (二沙灣砲台) which is located east of Keelung Harbor.
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