POLITICS
Pension protester dies
A protester who had been in a coma after a fall during a protest last week against pension reform has died, police said yesterday. Miao Te-sheng (繆德生), a member of the veterans’ group 800 Heroes, was trying to climb the wall of a legislative building when he lost his footing and fell, hitting the ground head-first. Miao had no brain activity since he was hospitalized on the day of the protest, and family members at 3pm yesterday agreed to take him off life support. On Tuesday last week, protesters arrived at the Legislative Yuan on the corner of Taipei’s Qingdao E Road and Zhenjiang Street at 5:50am and started climbing the building’s outer wall to enter the compound. Police initially forced the protesters out of the compound, but several of them rammed the gate with a truck and made their way back inside. During the commotion Miao attempted to climb the side of one of the compound’s buildings to shout from a height. He reached the second floor when he slipped and fell. Police expressed their condolences over the loss and said an autopsy would be conducted at a later date.
WEATHER
Hot foehn winds rise
Dawu Village (大武) in Pingtung County experienced this year’s first wave of foehn winds — dry, strong and hot downslope winds — at about noon yesterday, with temperatures reaching their highest this year, the Central Weather Bureau said. The foehn winds started at 11:46am, causing temperatures to soar and hit 36.6°C at 12:28pm.The bureau attributed the foehn winds to strong southwest winds crossing the Central Mountain Range. The Taitung District Agricultural Research and Extension Station reminded farmers in the area to observe temperature control measures for agricultural products amid the hot weather.
TRADE
Taiwan seeks closer ties: VP
Taiwan will try harder to establish stronger and closer partnerships and expand cooperation with countries in South Asia and Southeast Asia, as well as Australia and New Zealand, Vice President Chen Chien-jen (陳建仁) said yesterday. The nation will also seek the support of trade partners for its bid to join the Comprehensive and Progressive Agreement for Trans-Pacific Partnership, Chen said at a closed-door meeting with participants from the just-concluded East Asia Peace Forum in Taipei. The agreement is to be signed on Thursday. He added that Taiwan hopes to broaden exchanges with those countries, especially on issues such as talent cultivation and trade growth.
GOVERNMENT
Hualien for envoys: MOFA
Minister of Foreign Affairs Joseph Wu (吳釗燮) yesterday said the ministry plans to arrange a trip to Hualien for foreign ambassadors and representatives in Taiwan to promote tourism, in the wake of an earthquake that damaged parts of the eastern county last month. “We hope to arrange the trip as soon as possible as many foreign representatives have not visited Hualien, which is a beautiful place,” he said while touring the ministry’s headquarters in Taipei for the first time since assuming office on Monday last week. “The trip to Hualien will help them better understand Taiwan and will also be a significant step in helping the local tourism industry recover from the quake more quickly.” The magnitude 6 earthquake on Feb. 6 left 17 dead and 285 injured, with many subsequent aftershocks. One of the effects of the quake has been its impact on tourism, the county’s main source of income.
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