WEATHER
Rain forecast for next week
The nation could expect a rainy week ahead due to the humidity brought by a southwest monsoon and the influence of a low air pressure system, the Central Weather Bureau said on Thursday. Tropical storm Ewiniar, which formed on Wednesday, would soon weaken and become a tropical depression after making landfall in China, bureau forecaster Lin Po-tung (林伯東) said, adding that the rise of the southwest monsoon would move the system toward the east and force it into the Bashi Channel. This development would increase chances of rain nationwide between Sunday and Thursday next week, Lin said, adding that isolated showers are forecast for northern and central Taiwan. Rainfall in the south and the east would be more substantial and occur across a broader area during this period, he said.
CHARITY
Rummage sale at TAS
The Taipei American School (TAS) Orphanage Club is to host its 48th annual spring rummage sale today from 10am to 5pm. Club members have collected a wide variety of new and second-hand clothing, household items, shoes, games, toys and electronics. The sale is to be held in the school’s forecourt and lobby come rain or shine. All of the proceeds are to go to needy children and orphans in Taiwan and overseas. The school is at No. 800, Zhongshan N Rd Sec 6 in Tianmu (天母).
EDUCATION
Students row around island
Students from five schools on Pingtung County’s Siaoliouciou Island (小琉球) on Thursday rowed canoes around the island to celebrate graduating. About 120 students from Liouciou Junior High School and Baisha, Liouciou, Cyuande and Tiannan elementary schools participated, along with an escourt of 500 parents, volunteers and coast guards. This was the second time the Children of Liouciou: Navigation Challenge and Ocean Exploration Education event was held, with safety and navigation services provided by volunteers from Outward Bound Taiwan and Siaoliouciou Ocean Volunteers. The event gave the children a rare opportunity to connect with the seafaring traditions of their forebears and meets the national education principles of encouraging initiative and public engagement, and working toward the common good, said Liouciou Elementary School principal Chang Chien Cheng-feng (張簡振豐), who was the event’s main organizer. The challenge consisted of a 12km course and was completed via relays in five hours from 7am to midday, he said.
CRIME
Kinmen nabs 23 for fraud
Twenty-three suspects have been detained in Kinmen’s largest telecom fraud ring bust, police in the outlying county said yesterday. Twenty-one people, including a minor and four women, were arrested at a villa in Jinning Township (金寧) on Wednesday, and 34 iPads, 46 iPhones, three UBS devices, desktop computers and 22 SIM cards were seized, Kinmen police chief Yu Wen-sheng (游文勝) told a news conference. Two other key suspects, identified only by the surnames Chen (陳) and Chiang (姜), were also arrested in the township after a tracking operation that started in April, he said. The group, targeting people living in China, might have defrauded its victims of NT$6 million (US$200,000), he said. The 23 suspects, all from Taiwan proper, were sent to an anti-
crime center in Taichung on Thursday.
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,