SOCIETY
Taipei Prison’s festive party
More than 300 foreign inmates at Taipei Prison were given a taste of Christmas yesterday when the Taiwan Expatriates Caring Committee and 65 volunteers threw them an early Christmas party. The volunteers included people from Europe, the US and Southeast Asia as well as clergymen from various religions who have shown concern for the psychological health of the inmates. Prison warden Fang Tzu-chieh (方子傑) expressed his appreciation to volunteers in contributing to Taiwan’s correctional education.Taipei Prison said it currently houses 342 foreign nationals from 25 countries, with the oldest being 75. Most of the inmates from Europe and the US are in jail for narcotics offenses, and several of them are serving life sentences, it said, adding that inmates from Southeast Asian countries were primarily convicted on murder, bodily injury and narcotics charges.
CRIME
Three admit bribery charges
Three men who conspired with former National Fire Agency head Huang Chi-min (黃季敏) in accepting bribes have already handed over their illegal gains of NT$17.71 million (US$608,500), the Taipei District Prosecutors’ Office said yesterday. The office said Luo Tsai-chuan (羅財全), a former commissioner at the National Fire Agency, returned NT$1.3 million on Wednesday, while Huang’s elder brother, Huang Wen-chou (黃文宙), and businessman Wang Ching-wu (王經武) each returned NT$8,206,000 the following day. The three admitted to helping Huang Chi-min obtain kickbacks from businesspeople who won contracts. Huang Chi-min, who served as the national fire-fighting chief from 2002 to 2009, was reported to have awarded agency procurement contracts to businesspeople in return for bribes.
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,