WEATHER
Mercury to fall further
A cold air mass affecting the nation is forecast to continue, with temperatures expected to fall further today and tomorrow, the Central Weather Bureau said yesterday. The cold air was moving southward, it said, adding that daytime temperatures in northern Taiwan yesterday fell to 17°C to 18°C, down from about 23°C a day earlier, with nighttime temperatures of 13°C to 14°C. In central and southern areas, highs yesterday were 24°C to 30°C with low of 15°C to 17°C at night, it said. Meanwhile, Typhoon Wutip was about 3,360km east-southeast of Taiwan’s southernmost tip as of 2am yesterday, the bureau said. The storm was moving in a west-northwesterly direction toward Japan and is unlikely to affect Taiwan directly, it said.
DIPLOMACY
Delegation lands in St Lucia
Legislative Speaker Su Jia-chyuan (蘇嘉全) yesterday was to attend events to mark St Lucia’s 40th anniversary of independence as President Tsai Ing-wen’s (蔡英文) special envoy after departing from Taiwan on Wednesday evening. Su and his delegation embarked on a seven-day trip, during which they are also to meet with top St Lucian officials, including Prime Minister Allen Chastanet, Senate President Jeannie Giraudy-McIntyre and House Speaker Andy Daniel, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs said. Su is also to attend a groundbreaking ceremony for the Hewanorra International Airport redevelopment project, which is financed with a loan from Taiwan. St Lucia celebrates its Independence Day on Feb. 22, the date in 1979 when it became an independent state of the Commonwealth of Nations.
CRIME
Brother suspected of murder
The Keelung Police Bureau yesterday said it suspected that a squabble between two brothers led to an apparent homicide. A man surnamed Chen (陳), 44, called police yesterday morning saying he had killed his younger brother, police said, adding that when officers arrived at their home, they found the older Chen holding a knife splattered with blood and muttering to himself, while the younger brother, 42, lay dead in a bedroom with multiple stab wounds. Chen was saying: “Why does he not work? It bothers me,” police said, adding that both men had a history of mental illness. Forensic evidence indicated that the younger brother was stabbed in the bathroom before he was dragged to the bedroom, where he bled to death, police said. Preliminary investigations suggest that the suspect was angry because his brother was unemployed, frequently drunk and was physically abusing their sexagenarian mother, who also lives at the home, police said.
SOCIETY
Gay surrogacy event planned
The world’s largest “boot camp” to help gay men become parents is to stage its first Asia event in Taipei next month to address demand for surrogates in the region, organizers said on Thursday. New York-based non-profit Men Having Babies stages events around the world to provide advice and support to LGBT people who want to become parents and plans to stage its first annual Asian event on March 9 and March 10. “We have been witnessing over the last three years a growing interest from Asia — mostly Chinese — intended parents coming to the United States for surrogacy,” Men Having Babies founder and executive director Ron Poole-Dayan 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