SOCIETY
CNN lists Taipei 101 ride
Taipei 101 on Thursday beat other world-renowned skyscrapers in the selection of 49 life-changing journeys by CNN Travel with its 39-second elevator ride that travels non-stop to the building’s 89th-floor observation deck at a record speed of 1,010m per minute. Listed among the 43km-long Inca Trail of Peru and the Masai Mara National Reserve of Kenya, the 508m-tall building provides tourists “the sheer pleasure of blasting above the stifling masses in a steel box that pushes the limits of people-mover technology,” the travel review said. This was the second time a tourist attraction in Taiwan has made it onto the Web site of the US network’s travel section this week, after Guanshan (關山) in Kenting (墾丁) was hailed as one of the “12 superb sunset spots around the world” on Monday.
SOCIETY
Heatwave day off uncertain
The government remained undecided on whether a working day could be declared a holiday due to high temperature, Directorate-General of Personnel Administration Deputy Minister Chang Nien-chung (張念中) said yesterday. Chang made the remarks after Cabinet members remained divided at an inter-governmental meeting called to discuss the issue. There is no exact definition of what criteria must be met in order to qualify as a day off due to high temperature, Chang said. Chang said his office has instructed the Central Weather Bureau and the Centers for Disease Control to collect more information on how to determine the criteria and on cases of heat stroke in hot weather for further discussions. On Thursday last week, the mercury in Taipei hit 39.3°C, the highest temperature recorded in the city by the Central Weather Bureau since records began 117 years ago.
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,