CULTURE
Two nods for ‘Life of Pi’
The full list of this year’s nominees for the MTV Movie Awards were announced on Tuesday, with Taiwan-born director Ang Lee’s (李安) Life of Pi (少年PI 的奇幻漂流) nominated in two categories. Life of Pi lead actor Suraj Sharma was nominated for “Breakthrough Performance” and “Best Scared-as-Shit Performance.” The MTV Movie Awards ceremony will be held on April 14 in Los Angeles. According to the list, Django Unchained and Ted lead the pack with seven nominations each, followed by The Silver Linings Playbook, which landed six nominations.
Sports
Minister admonishes fans
Minister of Education Chiang Wei-ling (蔣偉寧) yesterday urged baseball fans to refrain from using demeaning remarks against the South Korean national team when cheering for the Taiwanese national team in the World Baseball Classic (WBC). Chiang made the comment in response to Taiwanese baseball fans using derogatory terms, such as “Korean dogs,” during the battle between the two archrivals on Tuesday night. “I believe that all the fans made such remarks out of love for their country and for our national team. I fully respect them, but I think there should be a boundary,” Chiang said. “Competition between two countries should always remain positive,” he added. By finishing at the top of Pool B in this year’s tournament, Taiwan secured a berth in the second round of the tournament for the first time since the event was launched in 2006.
TRADE
US delegation on its way
Deputy US Trade Representative Demetrios Marantis is to lead an interagency delegation to Taiwan on Monday and Tuesday for meetings of the US-Taiwan Trade and Investment Framework Agreement Council, the American Institute in Taiwan said in a press release yesterday. Marantis’ delegation will be joined by officials from the Office of the US Trade Representative and the US departments of state, commerce and agriculture, as well as officials from the institute. Bilateral negotiations under the framework agreement had been suspended by the US since 2007 in response to Taiwan prohibiting the import of US beef, first because of concerns over mad cow disease and then because of the US’ use of the feed additive ractopamine. Taiwan’s delegation is to be led by Vice Minister of Economic Affairs Bill Cho (卓士昭).
CRIME
Fraud ring unmasked
The Criminal Investigation Bureau announced on Tuesday that it has cracked down on a telecommunications fraud ring and arrested 16 suspects. The ring was led by a Taiwanese man identified by police only by his surname, Sung (宋), who was arrested in China last month and is to be repatriated to Taiwan, the bureau said. According to a police report, Sung’s fraud ring specialized in hiring Chinese women to make telephone calls from China to random people in Taiwan. If the calls were answered by men, the women would try to lure them into a romantic liaison before trying to dupe them out of money. The fraudsters would ask their targets to help them out of financial woes, the report said, adding that the victims would be asked to show up for a date at which they would meet the ring’s Taiwanese female accomplices, who would then ask them for money. The bureau estimated that the ring has pilfered about NT$100 million (US$3.37 million) from more than 100 victims.
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,