PUBLIC HEALTH
No MERS threat: CDC
The Centers for Disease Control (CDC) yesterday said that it does not see any immediate threat following China’s first confirmed case of Middle East respiratory syndrome (MERS), reported the previous day. No infections in Taiwan were recorded from a total of 166 passengers who shared the same flight as a male South Korean traveler who arrived in China on Tuesday despite being told earlier to cancel the trip after his father was diagnosed with the disease. The CDC said it remains in close contact with Chinese and South Korean health authorities to closely monitor the development of an outbreak in South Korea. The CDC has issued a level 2 travel alert for Saudi Arabia and a level 1 alert for the United Arab Emirates, Jordan, Qatar, Iran, Oman and Bahrain. Under the CDC’s three-tier system, a level 1 travel warning urges vigilance and health precautions; level 2 calls for a high degree of caution and strong protective measures; and level 3 advises against travel to or from a specified destination.
WEATHER
Capital records hottest day
Temperatures in Taipei reached 36.5°C yesterday afternoon, the highest reading seen so far in the special municipality this year, the Central Weather Bureau said. The record heat was recorded at 1:45pm and was the result of warm southwesterly winds, while Dawu Township (大武) in the southeastern county of Taitung and Keelung in northern Taiwan recorded 36.4°C and 36°C respectively, the bureau said. Temperatures in the capital topped 35.7°C the previous day, but forecasters said the sweltering weather could ease up today because rain is expected across the nation.
SOCIETY
Births rose 8.4% last year
A total of 211,399 babies were born nationwide last year, an increase of 8.4 percent over the previous year, according to statistics released yesterday by the Ministry of the Interior. Of the births, 0.6 percent were born to mothers who are foreign nationals, down 0.5 percentage points from the previous year. The average age of the mothers of newborns was 31 years and six months. The average age was 30.6 years among mothers from Southeast Asia, 30.9 among mothers who are Chinese, Hong Kong or Macau citizens, and 31.6 among mothers who were born in Taiwan. On average, mothers were giving birth for the first time at the age of 30.5 last year, up from 27.4 in 2004. Of first-time mothers, 57.3 percent were 30 or older.
CULTURE
Shakespeare’s Globe to visit
Shakespeare’s Globe theater is to visit Taiwan again to perform Hamlet as part of an international program to mark the 400th anniversary of the death of William Shakespeare. Led by the British Council and supported by the UK Foreign Office and VisitBritain, the British Tourist Authority, a series of activities celebrating Shakespeare’s anniversaries are taking place around the world until next year, UK Representative to Taiwan Chris Wood said last week. Last year marked the 450th anniversary of Shakespeare’s birth. As part of the activities, Shakespeare’s Globe is to visit Taiwan in July to perform Hamlet as part of their two-year “Globe to Globe Hamlet” project, which the performance troupe began touring last year. The theater is to stage the play in Taipei on July 6, according to the project’s Web site.
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