TRAVEL
Taipei sights make top 500
The National Palace Museum and Taipei 101 have been named among the world’s top 500 sights in Ultimate Travelist, a book from travel Web site and publisher Lonely Planet. The book says there are 500 places that travelers must visit, with the museum and Taipei 101 ranked No. 397 and No. 448 respectively. Lonely Planet said the museum displays many of the best Chinese works, such as Ming Dynasty porcelain and ancient paintings that were brought from China during the Chinese Civil War. Although Taipei 101 is no longer the tallest building in the world, its observatory on the 89th floor, which provides an unobstructed view of Taipei, is the best place for visitors to enjoy the fantastic scenery, it said. Topping the list are the temples of Angkor in Cambodia, followed by the Great Barrier Reef in Australia and Machu Picchu in Peru.
CULTURE
Musician to join OneBeat
Musician Tsai Hui-ya (蔡惠雅) has become the first Taiwanese to be named a fellow of a US-sponsored program described by the New York Times as the “United Nations of Music,” the American Institute in Taiwan (AIT) announced last week. Tsai, who plays a traditional string instrument called the liuqin, is to join a group of 24 musicians from 16 countries and territories in the OneBeat program in the Montalvo Arts Center in Saratoga, California, from Oct. 12 to Nov. 11. The musicians are to create cross-genre works, record innovative music, produce short-form videos, engage with local communities and practice music as civic engagement to promote resilient civil societies, according to an AIT Facebook post. OneBeat is a music diplomacy program initiated by the US Bureau of Educational and Cultural Affairs.
Staff writer, with CNA
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,