TOURISM
Tainan cruise to start Friday
A sightseeing cruise along Tainan’s old transport canal is to launch on Friday, the city’s Tourism Bureau said. The cruise is to pass under some of the city’s old bridges, bureau head Sue Wang (王時思) said, adding that passengers will have to duck to avoid hitting some of the lower bridges. The attraction offers a unique experience for visitors, she said. The 10km tour, which is to take passengers to some of the city’s popular destinations in the historic Anping District (安平), is to last about an hour, depending on the tide, the bureau said.
POLITICS
Ex-official denied China visit
Former Presidential Office secretary-general Tseng Yung-chuan (曾永權) was denied permission to travel to China next month, because the travel restriction on him as a former official who had access to top-level information still applies and his application was submitted too late, Presidential Office spokesman Alex Huang (黃重諺) said on Monday. Tseng, who served in the administration of former president Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九), on Dec. 6 applied for approval to visit China, Huang said, adding that Tseng had planned to set off tomorrow to visit Taiwanese businesspeople and students. However, Tseng, now a Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) deputy chairman, failed to submit his travel application 20 days before his planned departure date as stipulated by the Classified National Security Information Protection Act (國家機密保護法). The act stipulates that former presidents, premiers, government ministers and certain other officials with high levels of security clearance are required to gain approval for overseas travel within three years of leaving 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