DEFENSE
Jets stage air show preview
The air force showcased its flight skills in a rehearsal yesterday in Hsinchu, as a preview for an air show to be held on Saturday. Highlights of the rehearsal at Hsinchu Airbase included a 30-minute performance by the Thunder Tiger Aerobatics Team flying seven AT-3 trainers in a series of spectacular aerial stunts. Following the Thunder Tiger performance were solo demonstrations of the military’s main combat aircraft, the Mirage 2000, the F-16A/B and the Indiginous Defense Fighter. Each of the jet fighters demonstrated different skills, such as inverted flying, rotations and slow flying. Several Taiwan-based foreign officials and military officers were invited to the rehearsal. The air show will be open to the public.
Photo: Chien Jung-feng, Taipei Times
SOCIETY
Forum delegates visit center
Immigration officials from 12 Asian countries and non-governmental organizations attending a forum on the fight against human trafficking visited a call center for a 24-hour protection hotline for immigrant workers yesterday. The 1955 hotline, launched in 2009, has recruited spouses from the Philippines, Indonesia and Vietnam and other Asian countries as part of efforts to provide better services to newcomers, many of whom are Southeast Asian. New immigrants, as well as their employers, can use the hotline to seek legal counseling, register complaints or obtain protection services. The forum, which ends tomorrow, will be highlighted today by three workshops on various aspects of the issue. The representatives will also visit two facilities in Taipei and Nantou that provide shelter for human trafficking victims, the National Immigration Agency said.
LABOR
Respect for paid leave urged
The Council of Labor Affairs urged businesses to grant workers paid leave according to labor laws and warned that those who fail to do so face fines of up to NT$300,000 per violation. Workers who are employed for a certain period of time are entitled to annual paid leave, council officials said, citing the Labor Standards Act (勞動基準法). Under the act, workers begin to have the right to take paid leave after working for the same employer for a year, the officials said. According to the council, it has received an average of 10 complaints per month in the past two years about workers being deprived of paid leave. The number of complaints doubled last month and this month, the council said, adding that those who find themselves unable to obtain paid leave can call the council hotline for help at 0800-085151.
DIPLOMACY
Envoy to continue work
The nation’s new envoy to Japan, Shen Ssu-tsun (沈斯淳), said yesterday at Tokyo’s Haneda Airport that he would do his best to help negotiate more economic and cultural cooperation deals with Tokyo. Bilateral relations between Taiwan and Japan are already good, but there is more that can be done to further improve ties, Shen told Taiwanese expatriates and representatives from the Interchange Association, Japan, who welcomed him at the airport as he arrived to take up his new post. The Interchange Association is an agency of the Japanese government to handle exchanges with Taiwan in the absence of formal diplomatic relations. Shen said his predecessor, John Feng (馮寄台), laid significant groundwork for him during his three-and-a-half years as envoy to Japan, including establishing a representative office in Sapporo and overseeing the signing of a bilateral investment pact. Shen said he would continue where Feng had left off.
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,