A paratrooper is recovering well three months after he was critically injured during a drill in May, military authorities said.
Paratrooper Chin Liang-feng (秦良丰) from the Army Aviation and Special Forces Command was injured on May 17 when his parachute failed to fully open after he jumped from a C-130 plane that was flying at 396m during a rehearsal for the annual Han Kuang military exercises.
A hospital spokesman said that Chin was seriously injured and in a coma, adding that the severity of his coma was at level seven to eight on the Glasgow Coma Scale, with three being the worst condition and 15 being normal.
Three months later, the 26-year-old soldier is recovering well and was on Monday transferred to a regular ward from an intensive care unit, said Taipei’s Tri-Service General Hospital, where Chin has been hospitalized since June 25.
Although Chin was unable to attend a news conference on Thursday, he recorded a short video to express his gratitude to the military and those who sent him encouraging messages.
“Rehabilitation is difficult, but I can endure the pain. My goal is to stand up again before the end of the year,” Chin said in the video.
Department of Neurological Surgery head Chen Yuan-hao (陳元皓) said that Chin has made progress with rehabilitation and hyperbaric oxygen therapy.
“He no longer has head trauma and he does not require a ventilator to breathe. He remains conscious and can engage in conversation,” Chen said.
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