The Armed Forces Reserve Command was yesterday accused of spending more than NT$1 million (US$33,750) on a luxury tour for more than 150 retired generals and their families. The agency has denied any wrongdoing.
The command, a unit under the Ministry of National Defense, organized a tour scheduled yesterday and today to various sight-seeing spots and institutions in central Taiwan for about 180 retired generals and their families.
Media reports said the tour cost more than NT$1 million, with participants checking in at a luxury hotel in Nantou County’s Sun Moon Lake (日月潭) and the ministry mobilizing more than 100 military personnel for the trip.
Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) Legislator Yeh Yi-jin (葉宜津) accused the agency of squandering public funds at a time when most people are struggling to make ends meet and suffering from rising prices.
General Chiu Kuo-cheng (邱國正), commander of the reserves, said the activity was organized according to the Government Procurement Act (政府採購法) and the families of the retired generals paid for the trip, adding that the trip was part of the annual training course for reserve military personnel.
The average expense for each reserve general for the two-day trip is about NT$6,000, which is reasonable, Chiu said.
Ministry spokesperson David Lo (羅紹和) said as many as 35 similar tours had been held regularly in the past, regardless of which political party was in power.
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,