TRANSPORT
THSRC to cut discount
Taiwan High Speed Rail Corp (THSRC) is to cut the discount for business-class seats by half to 10 percent starting on Aug. 1, the company said yesterday. The one-way business-class fare between Taipei and Kaohsiung is to rise to NT$2,195, an increase of NT$245, the company said. Each high-speed train has one business-class carriage with 66 seats and 11 standard-class carriages. The original price of the business-class fare between Taipei and Kaohsiung was NT$2,440, but it has been discounted to NT$1,950 since March 1, 2008. Passenger loads in business class have risen to an average of 60 percent and nearly 80 percent during peak hours, leading to the decision to reduce the long-standing discount, the company said. The company on Wednesday next week is to start accepting orders for business-class tickets for travel after Aug. 1.
CRIME
Drugs seized, two arrested
Yunlin County police arrested two suspected drug dealers, and seized heroin and amphetamines worth up to NT$10 million (US$329,587), police announced on Monday. Douliou City (斗六) police said two men were arrested early on Monday on suspicion of drug dealing and 49.6g of heroin and 6.55kg of amphetamines were seized, as well as a number of inhalers. Police said they were acting on a tip-off that Taoyuan-based drug dealers were carrying a large quantity of drugs to Yunlin County. After investigating the tip-off for several days before obtaining a search warrant, a special team raided the residence of the two suspects in the early hours of Monday, arrested them and seized the drugs found at the site. The two suspects said they intended to sell the drugs over the summer break, police said. The case has been referred to the Yunlin District Prosecutors’ Office.
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