CONSUMER RIGHTS
Check ‘cooling fabric’: group
Consumers looking to buy clothing that is advertised as effective in helping wearers beat the summer heat should check whether the garments are made by certified manufacturers of so-called “cooling fabrics,” the Taiwan Textile Federation advised yesterday. Currently, only 15 textile makers in Taiwan are accredited as manufacturers of the fabrics, association section chief Chen Mei-chen (陳美貞) said. Fabrics that have a “Q-max” value of higher than 0.14 are said to have a genuine cooling effect, she said. The Q-max value represents the amount of heat a material is capable of conducting from the wearer. The bigger the value, the more cooling it is, with 0.14 separating cooling and non-cooling fabrics. Consumers can check for authenticity by entering the numerical code found on the label on tft.ttfapproved.org.tw/.
DIPLOMACY
Cross-strait exchange starts
A group of 1,100 Taiwanese university students gathered in Beijing yesterday at the start of a summer program organized by the China-based All-China Federation of Taiwan Compatriots to promote cross-strait exchanges. About 200 volunteers and students from Peking University, Renmin University of China and Beihang University also attended the event, which has been held every year since 2004. The students will first visit historical sites around Beijing, such as the Great Wall and the Summer Palace, and will attend a series of forums organized by universities in China. After the visit to Beijing, the group will visit 27 other locations around China. Tunghai University professor Chiu Jui-chung (邱瑞忠) said China was a powerful country that should not be neglected, and the camp was aimed at helping students learn more about China’s political, economic and social development.
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