CROSS-STRAIT
Flights to Ningxia to start
Direct flights will begin on Tuesday between Taiwan and Yinchuan, capital of the Ningxia Hui Autonomous Region in northern China, said Yang Ruey-tzhong (楊瑞宗), head of the Taiwan Strait Tourism Association’s (TSTA) Beijing Office. The flights will be operated by Taiwan’s Far Eastern Air Transport and the Shanghai-based China Eastern Airlines. Yang said the new service would help Taiwan attract travelers from Ningxia, home to 2.1 million Hui people, a predominantly Muslim ethnic group. The TSTA says Ningxia has more than 6.3 million people, 30 percent of whom are Muslims. Just 1,986 people from Ningxia traveled to Taiwan in the first three months of this year. Yang said Taiwan has a Muslim-friendly environment, with six mosques and 31 restaurants that are halal certified.
WEATHER
Water shortage not over
Days of heavy rain last week helped ease the nation’s water shortage, but officials said yesterday that a dry weather pattern could lie ahead. A series of cold fronts brought weekly precipitation ranging from 50mm to 100mm nationwide. Reservoirs in central Taiwan recorded the most significant increases in water levels, the Water Resources Agency (WRA) said. While water supplies for Greater Taichung, as well as for Hsinchu, Miaoli, Changhua and Nantou counties could remain stable through the end of June thanks to the recent rain, the situation in northern and southern Taiwan could remain tight, since drier weather is expected, the Central Weather Bureau said. WRA Deputy Director-General Tien Chiao-ling (田巧玲) said the agency would not rule out further cloud seeding until the plum rain season starts in the middle of next month.
CULTURE
Lantern on display in LA
The main lantern of the 2013 Taiwan Lantern Festival went on display at Dodger Stadium in Los Angeles, California, on Tuesday. The lantern, which is based on the theme “Soaring Dragon Brings Prosperity,” was part of the annual Taiwan Day event at the stadium that has been co-hosted by the Los Angeles Dodgers and Taiwan’s Tourism Bureau since 2009. Tourism Bureau Director-General David Hsieh (謝謂君) threw the first pitch in Tuesday’s game between the Dodgers and the San Diego Padres. Hsieh said he hoped that the lantern, which drew great attention at the Lantern Festival in Hsinchu two months ago, wouldgive Taiwan greater visibility in the world. The lantern will remain on display outside the stadium for a month to show baseball fans the beauty of Taiwan, the bureau said.
CROSS-STRAIT
Beijing museum chief visits
Beijing Palace Museum director Shan Jixiang (單霽翔) arrived in Taipei yesterday as part of an exchange between the museum and the National Palace Museum. Shan said he would outline a cooperation plan for the two museums for this year and the next three years during his five-day visit. Shan is scheduled to attend a meeting about “The Artistic Taste of Emperor Qianlong,” an exhibition on the life of one of the longest-ruling emperors of China’s Qing Dynasty (1644-1911), which is scheduled to open in October at the National Palace Museum. Shan will also visit Chiayi, Greater Kaohsiung and Kinmen. National Palace Museum Director Feng Ming-chu (馮明珠) and Shan will discuss plans to jointly catalog the 600 books compiled during Qianlong’s reign. The National Palace Museum has more than 300 of the books, while the Beijing museum has the rest, Feng said.
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,