EDUCATION
Hong Kong recruits students
Two Hong Kong universities will hold admissions consultations in Taiwan today to recruit students. The University of Hong Kong (HKU) and the Chinese University of Hong Kong (CUHK) will offer scholarships of more than NT$600,000 (US$20,250) per year to outstanding and disadvantaged students to pursue education in Hong Kong. CUHK said the school recruited 32 students last year after holding its first admissions session in Taiwan. Taiwanese students have been excelling, it said, adding that the enrollment quota this year will be flexible. Meanwhile, HKU plans to hold interviews, seminars and admissions counseling at National Taiwan University today to help reach its enrollment quota of 30 students. The two schools are listed among the top 10 universities in Asia, according to a report by Quacquarelli Symonds, a London-based company.
LITERATURE
Book wins German award
A Taiwanese book has won an award in a book competition in Germany and will be showcased at the Leipzig Book Fair, the Taipei Book Fair Foundation said. A Cachalot on a Train won one of two silver medals for Best Book Design among publications from all over the world at the Leipzig fair. Designed by Taiwanese illustrator NOBU, the cover of the book features a black whale. The book was written by Wang Yen-kai (王彥鎧) and features illustrated stories inspired by his travels around Taiwan. The awards ceremony will take place on March 15 and the book will be permanently kept at the Deutsches Buch- und Schriftmuseum, one of the world’s oldest book museums and part of the German National Library, the foundation said. Now in its 50th year, the competition took place earlier this month with 575 works submitted from 32 countries.
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,