WEATHER
Tropical storm to bring rain
A tropical depression near Guam has developed into a tropical storm and may begin to affect Taiwan by Monday, the Central Weather Bureau said yesterday. Tropical Storm Neoguri, the eighth storm in the region this year, was centered 2,700km southeast of the southernmost tip of Olanpi early yesterday, moving northwest at 19kph. Maximum sustained winds were 18mps, with gusts of up to 25mps, the weather bureau reported. Although the storm is forecast to swerve to the north toward Japan, its outer bands are likely to bring rain to Taiwan, especially northern and eastern areas, starting on Monday when the system is expected to move within 700km to 800km of the nation, forecasters said. The bureau has advised people planning to travel to Japan after Tuesday to check their flights in case of cancelations.
ENTERTAINMENT
Israeli film wins award
An Israeli film shown at this year’s Taipei Film Festival focusing on the conflict between Israelis and Palestinians hoped to encourage the audience to think about the reality of the situation, one of the film’s actors said. Israeli director Yuval Adler’s Bethlehem is about the dilemma of a Palestinian boy forced to choose between his family and an Israeli secret service officer, with whom he has developed a close bond. The point of the film is to spur people to “think about the situation” behind the tensions of the region, said Haitham Omari, a Palestinian who played a role in the movie. The 99-minute movie is one of the foreign films at the annual festival that has caught attention, earning the festival’s Audience Choice Award. That award typically goes to a Taiwanese film, the organizer said, adding that this year’s unusual result showed that the audience was intrigued by the film’s storyline. The ongoing 16th Taipei Film Festival is showing 160 films from at home and abroad. It runs until July 19.
CHARITY
Immigrants begin bike ride
A group of immigrants and their children set off yesterday on a bike ride that will take them on a nearly 1,000km tour of the nation to raise awareness of children suffering from abuse and neglect. The eight immigrants from China, Vietnam and Indonesia will take their nine children on the 12-day bike ride starting at National Sun Yat-sen Memorial Hall in Taipei, according to the trip’s organizer, Good Shepherd Social Welfare Services. The group will pedal counter-clockwise around the nation, making stops at four Good Shepherd service centers in Greater Tainan, Taitung and Hualien to visit the children there. Supplies will also be donated to the centers by car as part of the event.
NATIONAL DEFENSE
Ministry releases drill video
The Ministry of National Defense released footage of the 103-2 tri-service military drill, in which AIM-9 “Sidewinder,” AGM-114 and Hsiung Feng II missiles were launched. The drill was carried out at the Jiupeng Base in Pingtung County. In the footage posted on YouTube, viewers can see AH-1W and OH58D army helicopters taking off from the military base, as well as air-to-air Sidewinder missiles, air-to-ground AGM-114s and AGM-84 “Harpoons” being launched. The drill was originally scheduled for June 18, but was postponed until yesterday due to a protest staged by local fishermen.
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,