SOCIETY
Youth reliant on phones
Taiwanese adolescents rely heavily on their mobile phones for entertainment and interpersonal interactions, and the older they get, the more important their smartphones become to them, a survey released on Wednesday by the non-profit King Car Cultural and Educational Foundation showed. In the poll of Taiwanese aged 10 to 17, 76 percent said they would feel inconvenienced without a mobile phone to contact other people, and 64.1 percent said they would feel bored without one. In terms of phone usage, 16.1 percent of respondents use their phones more than five hours a day; 22.9 percent average three to five hours; 39.5 percent one to three hours; and 21.5 percent one hour a day. Most of the respondents used their phones to watch videos, interact on social media and play online games, said the survey, which was conducted in March with 3,017 valid samples.
SOCIETY
Student’s body found
The body of a Taiwanese student who went missing last week after going for swim in a river in Germany has been found, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs said on Wednesday. The body of the exchange student, surnamed Tsai (蔡), was found on Tuesday morning in the Weser River near Minden, a ministry statement said. Tsai’s family has confirmed that the body is that of their 18-year-old son, who had been missing since Friday last week. The ministry expressed its condolences to the family and thanked German rescue teams for their assistance in the search. According to local media reports, Tsai was part of a 60-member group that was camping on the banks of Weser River. He was swept away while swimming in the river.
SOCIETY
New scratch lotto coming
A new scratch ticket game is to be introduced on Monday, offering 200 top prizes of NT$100,000, Taiwan Lottery Corp said on Thursday. The Win-Win Lottery scratch tickets are to be sold at NT$100 each, and players will have a chance to win cash prizes of NT$100,000, NT$1,000, NT$200 and NT$100, Taiwan Lottery general manager Tsai Kuo-chi (蔡國基) said. The chances of winning would be 29.93 percent, based on two sets of 12 hidden numbers on the ticket, each in a range from 1 to 24, he said. The NT$100,000 prize would go to ticket holders who match none or all 12 winning numbers, Tsai said. Players who match one or 11 numbers would win NT$1,000, while those who match two or 10 would win NT$200, and those who match three or nine numbers would get NT$100, he said. The scratch game is part of the nation’s Public Welfare Lottery, which saw a 7 percent year-on-year increase in sales in the first five months of the year, Tsai said.
FOOD
Mussel season arrives
It is harvest time for mussels cultivated in waters off the coasts of Matsu, with the local delicacy to be available until late September, aquaculturists said. Mussel cultivation is a key aquaculture industry on the outlying island, with consumers on Taiwan proper the major customers, to whom farmers and retailers ship the fresh produce via home delivery services, while tourists can savor the limited seasonal delicacy at local restaurants. The harvest season normally runs from June to September, but began a week late this year, local businesses said. Mussels are known for their high nutritional value and are said to increase sperm count and improve sperm motility, a study by National Taiwan Ocean University’s food science department 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
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,