SOCIETY
‘Dog ambassador’ wanted
Non-profit group Animal Rescue Team Taiwan said on Monday it needs help delivering a former stray dog to its new home in Vancouver, Canada. The young dog named Fico was rescued by the team from Taiwan Power Co’s Taichung Thermal Power Plant late last year. At the time, Fico was seriously ill with a skin infection, the team said, adding that the dog has recovered after more than four months of care. Through the group’s efforts, a dog lover in Vancouver has agreed to adopt Fico, but the team said it is having trouble finding someone to take the dog to its new home. The group posted an emergency notice on its Facebook page yesterday seeking a “dog ambassador.” The team said it would pay the air cargo cost of slightly more than NT$10,000 (US$340) and provide all necessary documents, including quarantine papers.
SOCIETY
Evergreen donates US$10m
Chang Yung-fa (張榮發), the founder of Evergreen Group, donated US$10 million to China’s Sichuan Province on Saturday to support relief efforts following a deadly earthquake. A donation ceremony was held at the Sichuan Taiwan Affairs Office on Saturday. Chang urged the public to help quake victims rebuild their homes and asked that a concert, scheduled for May 7 at Peking University, be turned into a charity event, according to a statement released by the group on Saturday. Students from the province will read memorial verses at the concert, the statement added. The magnitude 6.6 earthquake, which struck Yaan City on April 20, left 196 people dead, 21 missing and 13,484 injured, official figures showed. Chang also donated US$10 million to relief efforts following a devastating earthquake in Sichuan in 2008, which killed about 70,000 people.
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