The reopening of the Taipei Economic and Cultural Office (TECO) in Guam, which had been set for this month, would be postponed due to the COVID-19 pandemic, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs said yesterday.
Guam Governor Lou Leon Guerrero on Monday last week said that she tested positive for the virus, but added that she only exhibited moderate symptoms and would continue to lead the fiscal and COVID-19 response teams from home.
As of yesterday afternoon, the US territory of nearly 168,000 people had reported 577 confirmed cases, with five deaths.
Photo: Chung Li-hua, Taipei Times
The Guam office is expected to reopen at the end of next month, but there is still uncertainty amid the pandemic, ministry spokeswoman Joanne Ou (歐江安) told a news conference in Taipei yesterday.
The office was closed in 2017 due to budget and personnel allocation issues, while its re-establishment reflects closer Taiwan-US ties and the growing strategic importance of the Pacific region, the ministry said previously.
The ministry’s work with the US focuses on boosting bilateral cooperation — including in defense or trade — working to lift restrictions on bilateral exchanges and continuing to invite US Cabinet officials to Taiwan, Department of North American Affairs Director-General Douglas Hsu (徐佑典) told the news conference.
Hsu made the remarks when asked to comment on a New York Times report that said the US was seeking to bolster Taiwan’s status, but without recognizing its sovereignty.
In other news, Somaliland’s representative office in Taiwan is expected to open early next month, Somaliland Representative to Taiwan Mohamed Omar Hagi Mohamoud told the Taipei Times in a message, but added that he could not at the time reveal the office’s location.
Mohamoud arrived in Taiwan on Friday last week and is in isolation until Friday.
Taiwan’s representative office in Somaliland was opened on Monday.
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,