CRIME
Cop punished over gun
A Taipei police officer has been punished for allowing some tourists to handle his firearm last week, a senior police officer said yesterday. The officer, surnamed Luo (羅), who works at the Zhongshan Police Station, received demerits for breaking firearm regulations, the station’s deputy director said. Although the policeman said he had allowed the Japanese visitors to handle his pistol as a friendly, diplomatic gesture, this kind of situation cannot be forgiven, the deputy director said. His immediate supervisor was also reprimanded. Luo, who has worked as a police officer for 18 years, allowed a group of foreign visitors to play with his gun on Feb. 4, while he was working at an intersection near the Martyrs’ Shrine, a popular Taipei tourist site. In a video posted online, Luo was also seen loading and unloading the cartridge in front of the curious tourists. The policeman said he only handed the gun to them after he removed the cartridge. Officials from the National Police Agency ordered an investigation into the issue after viewing the video post.
HEALTH
Spider lives in lady’s ear
A resident of Greater Taichung was surprised to find that a small spider had set up home in her ear and had even spun a web there, the doctor who helped her get rid of the arachnid said yesterday. The 49-year-old woman first consulted the doctor last month at the city’s Cheng Ching General Hospital after suffering itchiness and stinging in her left ear for several days. The 3mm spider was then found hiding in the woman’s ear canal, said Liu Po-jen (劉博仁), director of the hospital’s ear-nose-throat department. “The tiny web was spread out in the ear. It looked quite amazing,” said the doctor, who first used droplets to kill the spider before snatching it and clearing out the web. The woman was quoted as saying that she guessed the spider probably got into her ear after she “disturbed” it while cleaning her house. The doctor added that despite having seen various unusual items in people’s ears, from insects, seeds and stones to children’s toys, he had never seen an actual spider web in a person’s ear. He reminded people not to try picking their ears if they suspect tiny creatures are in there because they might crawl deeper inside. Instead, he suggested dropping some oil into the ear to kill the invader and then visiting a doctor.
CRIME
Former trader convicted
The Taitung District Court convicted Yu Huai-yin (游淮銀), a former legislator and a big-name stock trader, of bank “tunneling” and sentenced him to six years and six months in prison. Yu, who served as a legislator for Changhua County from 1993 to 1999 and as a Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) legislator-at-large from 1999 to 2002, was involved in tunneling into Taitung Business Bank when he served as board chairman from 1995 to 1996. He was accused of using his account and ordering his relatives, friends and the bank’s supervisor, Liu Yu-ju (劉育汝), to use their accounts to take out huge loans that lost the bank nearly NT$2.6 billion (US$88 million). Some of the money was diverted into the Full Long Group, which was established by Yu. The fraud was exposed when Central Deposit Insurance Corp (CDIC) took over the bank in the wake of a bank run. CDIC reported the crime in 2003. Yu was prosecuted for breach of trust and for violating the Business Entity Accounting Act (商業會計法).
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,