CRIME
NIA cracks smuggling ring
The National Immigration Agency (NIA) said yesterday that it had cracked a human smuggling ring, arresting its leader. The agency, working in collaboration with the Taoyuan District Prosecutors’ Office and the Canadian Trade Office in Taipei, arrested alleged ringleader Wu Shih-yao (吳世耀) upon his return to Taiwan. Authorities had received intelligence saying that since last year several Chinese had used forged Republic of China passports to enter Canada from Japan, South Korea, Macau and Malaysia, the agency said. Wu allegedly recruited more than 10 Taiwanese businesspeople in China who would provide the would-be illegal immigrants with boarding passes, it added. The ring made 200,000 Chinese yuan (US$32,590) per successful case, earning more than US$1 million in total, the NIA said. Wu, who denied the charges, was transferred to the Taoyuan District Prosecutors’ Office for questioning.
DIPLOMACY
Lawmakers to visit US
A group of lawmakers depart for New York today on a visit, organized by the Taiwan-US Inter-Parliamentary Amity Association, to exchange views on important issues with US officials, representatives and academics. Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) Legislator Lin Yu-fang (林郁方), the head of the association, said the group would be larger than in previous years and consist of eight lawmakers from across party lines. The delegation is to fly to New York to meet with representatives of Taiwan’s diplomatic allies at the UN and members of a US think tank, before heading to Washington to meet with US lawmakers and government officials. The main topics of discussion are expected to be arms sales and Taiwan’s participation in international organizations, Lin said. The group is to finish its visit in San Francisco, where it plans to meet overseas Taiwanese associations.
POLITICS
Units to move to Sinjhuang
Several central and local government units are to move into a newly opened office building in New Taipei City (新北市) in September, which is set to bring new business opportunities to the area. A total of 13 central and local government units, including the Ministry of Culture, the Hakka Affairs Council and the Council of Indigenous Peoples, plan to move into a new building in New Taipei City’s Sinjhuang District (新莊), but Democratic Progressive Party Legislator Wu Ping-jui (吳秉叡) said that according to the floor plan, the entire seventh and eighth floors of the building are to be used for document storage, giving rise to the question of whether the office space is being used efficiently. The Ministry of the Interior’s Construction and Planning Agency said the building would house 3,460 staff.
HEALTH
Fourth JE case reported
The nation saw its fourth case of Japanese encephalitis (JE) this year at the end of last month, the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) reported. A 42-year-old male developed symptoms of fever, vomiting and loss of appetite, and later experienced reduced consciousness before being hospitalized and diagnosed with the disease, the CDC said on Tuesday. The patient lives and works close to pig farms, paddy fields and dove cotes, which are the breeding habitats of the Culex tritaeniorhynchus mosquito, the main vector for the disease, physician Phillip Lo (羅一鈞) said. Lo cautioned the public to make sure their surroundings are clear of mosquito breeding grounds.
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,