EARTHQUAKE
Quakes shake Hualien
Northern Hualien County was rattled by 10 earthquakes late on Monday and early yesterday ranging in magnitude from 3.5 to 4.6, the Central Weather Bureau said. There were no immediate reports of damage or injuries. The magnitude 4.6 quake, which struck at 10:29pm on Monday, was one of five earthquakes that rumbled in rapid succession between 10:10pm and 10:30pm about 27km northeast of the Hualien County Government site in Hualien City. The earthquake’s intensity peaked in sparsely populated Taroko (太魯閣), registering a 5 on Taiwan’s 0-7 scale. Earthquakes with magnitudes of 3.5, 3.8, 4.2 and 4 were reported in the same location as the earlier succession of shocks at 11:44pm on Monday and 4:47am, 4:53am and 7:55am yesterday respectively, the bureau said. The other earthquake in the series, a magnitude 4 temblor, occurred at 8:16pm on Monday.
TOURISM
Shanyuan Bay beach closed
The Miramar Resort Hotel in Taitung’s Shanyuan Bay (杉原灣) on Sunday warned off vacationers from the beach with a notice, saying that it is closed for business and no lifeguards are on watch. The resort hotel is part of a controversial project to develop hotels and recreational facilities on a 11.3-hectare stretch of Shanyuan Bay, which activists said would damage the coral reefs and archeological treasures in the area, and interfere with regional Aboriginal people’s free use of the beach, resulting in a decade of litigation and protest. On March 31, the Kaohsiung High Administrative Court ruled against the Taitung County Government and the developers, finding that the county environmental review had been improperly conducted and revoking the hotel’s business permit.
SOCIETY
Identifying stress indicators
Of the 4,341 suicides and suicide attempts reported last year to the Taipei City Government’s Suicide Prevention Center, 15 percent were related to stress at work, statistics showed. People in the 25-to-44 age bracket accounted for 43 percent of the cases. The age bracket also forms the bulk of the nation’s workforce, the Taipei Health Department said. Psychologist Chiu Yung-lin (邱永林) said people should monitor their physical condition to gauge stress levels. If a person experiences headaches, insomnia, bad skin, recurring oral ulcers, chest pain or tightness, rapid heart rate, back and neck pain, or hyperacidity and stomach pain, these symptoms could indicate a malfunctioning immune system caused by stress. The more symptoms appear, the more the body is loaded with stress, Chiu said. One quick and easy way to relax the body is by repeatedly clenching one’s fists or shrugging one’s shoulders and then letting down one’s arms naturally, Chiu said.
SOCIETY
Long hours take a toll
Long hours leave many workers without enough time to relax or be with their families, a recent survey released by yes123 job bank found. A total of 61.2 percent of workers under the age of 40 who responded to the survey said they do not have enough time to rest, 37.1 percent said they cannot have regular meals during working days, 29.9 percent said they do not have time to exercise and 56.5 percent said they cannot achieve a balance between career and family. The survey also found that only 15.8 percent have had a pay rise this year, compared with 22.2 percent in a similar poll last year. The survey of 1,112 job bank members who are currently employed was conducted between April 6 and April 25.
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,