SOCIETY
Museum aims to heal hearts
A traveling “museum” focusing on failed relationships will go on display in Taipei on Saturday and run through Sept. 1. Event organizers yesterday said the “Museum of Broken Relationships” aims to heal and inspire people who have gone through traumatic breakups. About 100 items will be on display at the “museum,” which is on its third visit to the Asia-Pacific region, having toured Singapore and the Philippines since its establishment in Croatia in 2010. Local perspectives will be on display during the Taipei exhibition, the organizers said. The museum’s entire collection comes from donations. According to the museum’s official Web site, the touring exhibition, featuring personal experiences, local culture and history, hopes to inspire people to search for deeper insights from rather than rue their failed relationships.
SOCIETY
NIA extends ROC stays
National Immigration Agency (NIA) Director-General Hsieh Li-kung (謝立功) yesterday said the agency would extend the period that Republic of China nationals without household registration who enter the country on a landing visa can stay from 30 days to three months. Hsieh said the new policy should lighten the burden for overseas nationals who plan extensive stays in the country, and it could benefit about 60,000 people once it takes effect. However, the change will only take effect two months after the necessary administrative procedures are completed.
SOCIETY
FACT opens autism center
The Foundation for Autistic Children and Adults in Taiwan (FACT) opened its Zhishan Education Center in Taipei yesterday to help raise awareness of the need for early diagnosis of autism and therapy. Autism symptoms are often mistaken for slow development, FACT chairwoman Huang Chien-fang (黃千芳) said. As a result, children with autism who are not diagnosed early on can miss out on the most critical time to receive effective therapy, Huang said. Delayed therapy affects their ability to handle everyday tasks and find employment, she added. The foundation is dedicated to whole-person development for autistic children, Huang said, and the center will offer therapy as well as support for families of autistic children. The number of people diagnosed with autism increased 10.05 percent between 2011 and last year, the foundation said. Autism rates this decade have increased 2.7 times compared with the last decade, marking the largest increase among all disabilities in the time period, Huang said.
CULTURE
Shei-pa Park stages show
The Shei-pa National Park Headquarters in Miaoli County will hold a show on Saturday highlighting innovations to Atayal traditional tribal clothing, in a bid to promote Aboriginal cultural and creative industry. Park headquarter director Lin Ching (林青) said this is the third year in which the park has worked with the Yeh Tong workshop to promote innovative creations for traditional Aboriginal clothing. “This year we are using fuchsia, royal blue, purple and green, colors favored by the Atayal for the clothing,” Lin said. “The clothing feature traditional elements like tassels and pearls, but also ‘modern’ innovations that reflect the designers’ aim to free the clothes from the very word that defines — and traps — them.” Lin said 130 pieces of art and decorations made from wool, felt and other materials would be displayed at the show.
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,