SOCIETY
Universiade controls begin
Traffic controls around the Sinjhuang Sports Complex in New Taipei City, which is to host several competitions during the Summer Universiade, started yesterday and are to last until Aug. 30. All temporary parking spaces near the complex will be subject to safety inspections, the New Taipei City Government’s Education Department deputy head Chiang Wei-min (蔣偉民) said. The city will provide 130 parking spaces at nearby Xintai Junior High School and Zhonggang Elementary School free of charge from 6am to 11pm between Friday and Aug. 29, Chiang said. All courts, fields and facilities at the park will be closed to the public for the duration of the Universiade, the city said, advising people to use sports facilities at junior-high and elementary schools nearby. The city is home to the Universiade Athletes’ Village and seven sports venues, including four at the park.
SOCIETY
Man hit by train in Taipei
A man died after jumping off a platform at the Taipei Railway Station late yesterday morning being hit by a train that was pulling into the station. The man, estimated to be about 50 years old, jumped on to the tracks from the station’s platform No. 3 at 11:19am and was hit by a southbound Chu-Kuang Express passenger train. He was rushed to the nearby National Taiwan University Hospital, but was found pronounced dead on arrival, firefighters said. Authorities offered few details about the man or whether he was trying to commit suicide, but said that he suffered multiple fractures to the bones in his limbs and ribs. Railway police are investigating the incident.
EARTHQUAKE
Tremors felt in Taitung
A magnitude 5.2 earthquake yesterday struck off the coast of Taitung County in eastern Taiwan at 8:08am, the Central Weather Bureau said. The temblor occurred in waters 82.3km south of Taitung County Government Hall at a depth of 63km, bureau data showed. It was felt most strongly in Taitung County’s Orchid Island (蘭嶼, Lanyu), where it registered 3 on the nation’s seven-point earthquake intensity scale. It had an intensity of 2 in Pingtung County’s Oluanpi (鵝鑾鼻) and Nanwan (南灣), while it registered 1 in Taitung City, Jiali (佳里) in Tainan, Alishan in Chiayi County, Chiayi City, Douliou City (斗六) in Yunlin County and Changhua City, the bureau said. No casualties or injuries were reported.
SCHOLARSHIPS
Stipends introduced for Thai
Taiwan has launched a new graduate scholarship program that gives priority to children of Thai nationals who have worked or are working in Taiwan, as well as those from disadvantaged families, according to Taiwan’s representative office in Thailand.
Three scholarships are available starting this year and applications will be accepted from September, the Taipei Economic and Cultural Office in Thailand said. The office set up the scholarship in cooperation with the Chung Hwa Rotary Educational Foundation. To be eligible, applicants must be studying for a graduate degree in Taiwan, the office said. The scholarship amount is NT$160,000 (US$5,270) for doctoral students and NT$120,000 for master’s degree students, it added. The scholarship is aimed at promoting relations between the two countries and showing Taiwan’s appreciation for Thai migrant workers’ contribution to the nation’s economic development.
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