■ Transportation
No-car event to hit traffic
Due to the "Cycling Taipei" event this morning, traffic controls will be imposed in parts of Taipei City and County, the Taipei City Traffic Department said on Thursday. Taipei Mayor Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九) and acting Taipei County Commissioner Lin Hsi-yao (林錫耀) will ride bicycles and meet at the border between the city and county on the Huajiang Bridge. The route also includes Renai Road, Aiguo W Road, Nanning Road and Heping W Road. Officials said that bus lanes on Renai Road, Zhongshan S Road, Aiguo W Road, Heping W Road and Nanning Road will be closed between 7am and 10:30am. The north side of Huajiang Bridge will be closed, as well as Taipei County's riverside expressway toward Banciao.
■ Military
Probe results released
The Ministry of National Defense yesterday announced the results of an investigation into three recent mishaps at army depots. In relation to Army Captain Sun Chi-hsiang (孫吉祥), who died from severe internal bleeding after being run over by an armored vehicle, the ministry said the vehicle's accelerator was out of order and that the vehicle had been suspended from use. Sun, however, still ordered a soldier who was not qualified to operate the vehicle to drive it, resulting in the fatality. In a separate incident in which three soldiers were killed in an explosion at a weapons factory in Kaohsiung County, the ministry said the staff at the factory did not follow regulations and the director of the factory attempted to cover this up after the explosion. The ministry said a third incident in which explosions rocked an ammunition depot on Matsu was not caused by human error. However, 10 military personal are to be disciplined for poor supervision.
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
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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