DIPLOMACY
Ma to visit allies next month
The Ministry of Foreign Affairs is planning a trip for President Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九) to the nation’s diplomatic allies in South America and the Caribbean next month, sources familiar with government affairs said on Sunday. If the arrangements go according to plan, the trip will mark Ma’s first visit to Saint Lucia, Saint Vincent and the Grenadines, and the Federation of Saint Christopher and Nevis. The visit will be part of Ma’s itinerary when he travels to attend the Aug. 15 inauguration of Paraguayan president-elect Horacio Cartes, the sources said. Taiwan is in talks with the US government regarding transit issues, as Ma will have to pass through US territory on his way to and from the countries on his itinerary, the sources said. Meanwhile, the Presidential Office said the trip was still in the planning stage and nothing has been finalized.
ENVIRONMENT
Taipei vulnerable to quakes
Taipei would be devastated if a magnitude 6.3 earthquake — which struck Nantou County last month — hit the capital, Minister of the Interior Lee Hong-yuan (李鴻源) said yesterday. The quake could bring down 4,000 buildings in Taipei, Lee said during a speech on coping with and adjusting to climate change at Taichung City Hall. On June 2, a magnitude 6.3 earthquake struck Nantou’s Jhushan Township (竹山), killing four people. Lee also cautioned the public to be prepared to deal with the effects of climate change. A former civil engineering professor, Lee said the nation’s average temperature increases by about 1.5 percent a year, which is double the global rate.
CULTURE
Australia exhibit in Taitung
An Australian touring art exhibition will visit Taitung County from Friday through Aug. 25, making Taiwan the only East Asian country to host the program that highlights Aboriginal identity, event organizers said yesterday. The exhibition, titled “Message Stick: Indigenous Identity in Urban Australia,” will feature a selection of significant works by 11 aspiring Aboriginal Australian artists, the National Museum of Prehistory in Taitung County said. “It will be a great opportunity for Taiwanese to get to know about Australian arts,” museum official Chiu Chiung-i said by telephone. The works will represent the artists’ ties to Aboriginal culture and their response to the growing momentum of the Aboriginal rights movement in Australia since the 1967 national referendum that gave Aboriginal people full citizenship rights, she said. Through their works, artists living in urban areas reconnect with their heritage.
RELIGION
Temple opens in France
The largest Buddhist temple in Europe opened in suburban Paris on Sunday, according to Fo Guang Shan Monastery, which built the facility. The monastery said the temple, built over an area of 0.68 hectares, is a “green” building designed to fit in with its natural environment. As a building combining Buddhist and Western philosophy, the temple is a masterpiece of Buddhist architecture, the monastery said. Fo Guang Shan abbot Hsin Pao and about 3,000 guests, including religious representatives, politicians and local residents, attended the inauguration ceremony for the temple in the Parisian suburb of Bussy Saint Georges. The new temple’s abbot, Man Chien (滿謙), expressed hope that the temple would serve as a bridge for cultural exchanges between East and West, and would spread awareness about the Buddhist way of life, in line with the goals of Fo Guang Shan.
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