WEATHER
Plum rain season to start
Taiwan’s seasonal plum rain is forecast to arrive this afternoon, bringing rain across the nation, the Central Weather Bureau said. Daytime high temperatures yesterday hovered between 25?C and 29?C in the north, and 31?C in central and southern regions, according to the bureau. Thunderstorms or showers are expected in northern and central areas and intermittent rain in other parts of the nation until Thursday, forecasters said. During the plum rain season, which is peculiar to East Asia and named because it coincides with the ripening of plums, frontal systems tend to linger over the nation, bringing severe thunderstorms and heavy rain for many days.
POLITICS
Poll to set DPP primary
The Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) is to complete its primary for the Taipei mayoral election as an opinion poll by Wednesday next week, DPP Secretary-General Lin Hsi-yao (林錫耀) said yesterday. The poll is to be the first step in deciding the party’s candidate in the year-end election from among four aspirants: former vice president Annette Lu (呂秀蓮), lawyer Wellington Koo (顧立雄) and legislators Pasuya Yao (姚文智) and Hsu Tain-tsair (許添財). The winner is then to enter a “second-phase” of selection among opposition candidates — also in the form of an opinion poll — to choose who is to represent the pan-green camp, Lin said. That selection process is expected to pit the DPP’s pick against green-leaning independent hopeful, surgeon Ko Wen-je (柯文哲), and is expected to be completed by the middle of next month. Taipei is considered a stronghold for the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT), leaving many in the DPP battling to decide between supporting a party candidate or backing Ko to challenge the KMT’s strength in the city.
POLITICS
KMT chooses in Changhua
Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) Legislator Lin Tsang-min (林滄敏) has won the party’s primary for the Chang
hua County commissioner election for Nov. 29, the party announced yesterday. The primary was based on opinion polls conducted by three pollsters from April 30 to Friday. Lin obtained 38.725 percent of overall support, more than any of the other four candidates also vying for the party’s nomination. Lin thanked the public for supporting him and pledged to turn Changhua into a prosperous and progressive county if elected. The other four KMT hopefuls in the primary were Changhua Deputy Commissioner Ko Cheng-fang (柯呈枋, 31.335 percent), Sihu Township (溪湖) Mayor Chen Wen-han (陳文漢, 11.951 percent), former county labor affairs chief Huang Chun-tao (黃君韜, 10.42 percent) and former National Assembly member Tsai Chih-hong (蔡志弘, 6.946 percent).
SOCIETY
Taoyuan expo to open
The Taoyuan Baby and Child Products Expo and Taiwan Tourism Factories Festival is set to open on Thursday, Taoyuan County officials said. The first 500 visitors to the four-day expo and festival in the Taoyuan Arena are to be offered free soy sauce, while participating enterprises are to provide various raffle tickets, officials said earlier this week. The annual event showcases products manufactured by big-name companies in Taoyuan County at bargain prices, officials added. Taoyuan Economic Development Bureau Director Chen Shu-jung (陳淑蓉) said the show has drawn more than 40,000 visitors and sold NT$30 million (US$1 million) worth of products each year since it began two 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
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