AGRICULTURE
Expo rice to help feed poor
Greater Taichung’s Agricultural Bureau said it will purchase a field of colorful rice strains that was grown to promote the 2018 Taichung International Flora Expo and donate the harvested rice to a food bank in the municipality. To help promote the expo, the city government planted black glutinous rice along with yellow and green varieties in a design that, when seen from above, reads “2018 International Flora Expo in Taichung.” The rice, which covers a hectare of farmland, could be harvested next month, bureau Director Cai Jing-qiang (蔡精強) said. He added that the field could produce 3 tonnes of rice, which will be donated to help disadvantaged groups. The public can enjoy a clear view of the field from the farmers’ market in Waipu District (外埔區) before the rice is to be harvested on June 20, Cai said.
AGRICULTURE
Urban farming encouraged
New Taipei City is promoting urban farming in residential areas, hoping to encourage residents to transform idle spaces on rooftops and in public areas into vegetable gardens. By growing their own vegetables, residents can beautify the environment while promoting organic agriculture, Agriculture Department Commissioner Liao Jung-ching (廖榮清) said on Wednesday while visiting a hillside community in Xindian District (新店). The practice would bring food to the table along with peace of mind, Liao said, adding that small urban farms can have a “healing effect,” as city dwellers relieve stress by working on their farms. Tammy Turner, an American who has lived in Xindian for 30 years, said she and her neighbors use fallen leaves and kitchen leftovers as fertilizer to transform a plot of wasteland into a community garden.
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