SOCIETY
Net blamed for eye fatigue
With more people going online, more than 70 percent of the respondents to a recent survey have complained of eye fatigue, according to government statistics released yesterday. The Research, Development and Evaluation Commission also found that 50.5 percent of respondents think their handwriting ability has worsened, while 26 percent think their social ability has declined. The survey found that the number of people using mobile devices to go online has risen steadily, increasing to 77.3 percent last year from 41.9 percent in 2009. It is estimated that 73 percent of the population went online last year, or 15.1 million, up by 320,000 from the previous year, with most of the growth among the 30 to 49 age group.
ENTERTAINMENT
US star visits temples
Norman Reedus, an actor in the popular US zombie TV series The Walking Dead, visited temples in Taipei on Monday and received blessings for the year to come. The actor, in Taiwan to promote the latest episodes of the drama series, took time to visit the Taoist Chingfu Temple and Hsingtien Temple. “I got blessed for 2013, for a good year, so I’m super excited about that,” Reedus said. “They gave me a little pouch to take with me that I’ll keep in my pocket.” The actor also lit a lantern of illumination to pray for a bright future and took part in a “recalling the frightened soul” ceremony at the temples, Fox International Channels Taiwan said. The actor was scheduled to leave for Japan yesterday.
SOCIETY
Workers shun gatherings
Fifty-one percent of office workers would prefer not to attend family gatherings during the Lunar New Year holiday as they do not like being bombarded with personal questions, according to an online survey released by 360d job bank yesterday. Questions about relationships, jobs and salaries were especially unpopular, the survey showed. Meanwhile, 49 percent said they do not like attending family functions because they are not close to their relatives. The Lunar New Year holiday is a chance for family members to reconnect, but raising private or sensitive issues could cause awkward situations, the 360d job bank said. The survey collected 1,017 valid responses from Jan. 5 to Jan. 15 and has a margin of error of 3 percentage points.
CROSS-STRAIT TIES
Chunghwa stays mum
The nation’s largest telecommunications company, Chunghwa Telecom Co, declined yesterday to comment on a Chinese news report that it plans to build a cloud computing center in southern China in partnership with a Chinese telecoms firm. According to the China News Service report, Chunghwa Telecom and China Telecom Co have agreed to set up a cloud data processing facility in Pingtan to accommodate 4U rackmount servers. Asked about the report at a Taipei forum, Chunghwa Telecom chairman Lu Shyue-ching (呂學錦) declined to confirm it, but expressed concerns over information security. Minister without Portfolio Simon Chang (張善政), who was also at the forum on Taipei’s cloud industry, said the government knows little about the reported project. According to the news report, the investment project is expected to attract investment of 30 billion yuan (US$4.8 billion) from related industries in China and create 11,700 jobs.
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