CRIME
Sex party involved minor
An initial investigation into an alleged sex party on a Chu-kuang Express train on Feb. 19 revealed that an underage female was involved, prosecutors said yesterday. The girl, 17, told the Railway Police Bureau earlier in the day that the sex was consensual, said Lee Hai-lung (李海龍), spokesman for the Banciao District Prosecutors’ Office. The girl was charged with violation of the Social Order Maintenance Act (社會秩序維護法) and of the Children and Youth Welfare Act (兒童及少年福利法) and her case has been referred to a juvenile court, Lee said. A man surnamed Tsai (蔡), who allegedly arranged the sex party, was arrested on Monday by the bureau. His case was transferred to the Banciao District Prosecutors’ Office, where he faces charges of violating sexual morality laws, Lee said. Twenty-one other men, three of whom are accused of serving as lookouts, and two women who served as waitresses were also involved, according to police.
SOCIETY
Ultramarathoner begins run
Japanese ultramarathoner Ryoichi Sekiya began a 13-day island-wide run yesterday to show his appreciation for Taiwan’s assistance to Japan after the country was battered by a massive earthquake and tsunami on March 11 last year. Sekiya, who won his sixth consecutive Soochow University 24-hour ultramarathon in December last year with a distance of 261.257km, started his run at the school’s track, which he said was as familiar to him as his hometown. The 45-year-old will try to average 82km a day to complete the 1,064km run. His goal is to return to the university’s track on March 11 at 1:20pm for a memorial service to commemorate the victims of last year’s disasters, the school said.
EDUCATION
Foreigners choose Mandarin
A growing number of foreign students in Taiwan are choosing Mandarin and visual communication design as their majors, according to statistics recently published by the Ministry of Education. In addition to traditionally popular business majors, Chinese language and culture and visual communication design have are among the 10 most popular majors chosen by foreign students over the past three years, ministry figures show. Finance was the top major of choice among foreign students in 2010 and last year, the figures showed. Business administration, management, science and engineering remain popular. The ministry attributed the rising popularity of finance to Taiwan’s increasing recruitment of students from Southeast Asian countries, with the region’s booming financial sector boosting demand for those majors.
SOCIETY
Caregiver charged
A caregiver in New Taipei City (新北市) was charged with negligence after leaving a sick elderly man she was hired to take care of, according to prosecution documents released yesterday. The 27-year-old woman was also charged with causing injury through occupational negligence when the man, who had suffered a stroke, fell down because she did not hold his arm, the Banciao District Prosecutors’ Office said. The man’s son hired the woman in August last year because his father had a stroke and was suffering from Alzheimer’s disease, the documents showed. The woman ran away on Oct. 8 after complaints about not being paid by her employer, the prosecutors said, and was later caught. The woman, despite admitting leaving the man alone at home, did not feel she had done anything wrong, but the prosecutors said she put the man’s life at risk by abandoning him.
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