DIPLOMACY
Slovakia delegation to visit
A 10-member delegation led by Deputy Speaker of the Slovak National Council Milan Laurencik and President of the Bratislava Region Juraj Droba is to visit Taiwan from Sunday to Friday, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs said yesterday. The pair will be joined by five Slovak lawmakers, including Peter Osusky, chairman of the Slovakia-Taiwan Parliamentary Group. Minister of Foreign Affairs Joseph Wu (吳釗燮) is set to honor Osusky with the Friendship Medal of Diplomacy in recognition of his promotion of bilateral relations, the ministry said, adding that Wu would also sign an agreement on judicial cooperation in civic matters with the delegation. This is the second contingent Slovakia has sent to Taiwan in six months, after a 43-member delegation led by the country’s deputy economic minister visited Taiwan in December last year.
CULTURE
Australian arts deal inked
The National Culture and Arts Foundation and the Australian Office in Taipei have signed a memorandum of understanding to enhance exchanges in the fields of art and culture. The agreement was signed in Taipei on Wednesday by Australian Representative to Taiwan Jenny Bloomfield and foundation chairwoman Lin Mun-lee (林曼麗), they said in a joint statement. The countries have agreed to establish programs to support and encourage exchanges between Taiwanese and Australian artists, especially those from indigenous backgrounds. They are also to support cooperation in a range of other areas, including the visual and performing arts, literature and professional education. Bloomfield said Australia and Taiwan have a long history of arts and cultural cooperation, adding that “First Wave,” an upcoming indigenous fashion exhibition scheduled to run from next month to September, would showcase the strong links between the indigenous arts, culture, and creative industries of Australia and Taiwan.
HIGHER EDUCATION
Local schools ranked
Six Taiwanese universities have been ranked among the 100 best in Asia, with National Taiwan University (NTU) placing in the 21st, the UK-based Times Higher Education said on Wednesday. Other top-ranked local schools include Taipei Medical University (29th), China Medical University (35th), Yang Ming Chiao Tung University (44th), Tsing Hua University (59th), and Asia University (78th). NTU dropped one spot from last year, while the number of Taiwanese universities in the top 100 decreased from eight to six. The report’s top 10 universities in Asia included Tsinghua University and Peking University in China, National University of Singapore, University of Hong Kong and Nanyang Technological University in Singapore.
CRIME
Photos of minors net jail term
The Taiwan High Court on Wednesday ruled that a man given a 104-year sentence for soliciting nude photos from girls as young as eight must serve at least six years in prison. The Supreme Court said that 26-year-old Lin He-chun (林和駿) enticed 81 girls to send him nude and obscene photos. Lin was handed an additional 34-month sentence for nine other offenses, including sharing nude photos of underage girls and committing sexual indecency with minors. The High Court ruled that Lin should serve a minimum of six years of his sentence, in addition to 18 months of the 34-month sentence, which can be commuted to a fine.
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,