■ TRAVEL
Taipei-Nankan route busiest
The flight route linking Taipei and Nankan (南竿), Lienchiang Province, registered the highest domestic air passenger load factor (PLF), with 82.7 percent last month, the Civil Aeronautics Administration (CAA) reported on Friday. UNI Airways is the sole operator of that route. The Taichung-Kinmen route, also serviced by UNI, registered the second-highest PLF, with 81.3 percent, followed by the Tainan-Kinmen route. with a 79.4 percent rate, CAA statistics showed. Other routes with a PLF higher than 70 percent last month included Taichung-Nankan, Taipei-Kinmen and Taipei-Peikan (北竿), Matsu, routes.
■ HEALTH
More oral cancer screening
The Department of Health (DOH) will expand the scale of oral cancer scanning beginning next year, increasing the number of people checked from 300,000 to 600,000 annually. Wu Chien-yuan (吳建遠), an official at the DOH's Bureau of Health Promotion, said oral cavity cancer was the principal culprit in the nation's increasing death rate from cancer among males in the past 10 years. The average age of Taiwanese dying from oral cancer is 55, he said. The disease is heavily correlated with betel nut chewing,Wu said, adding that between 1.5 million and 2 million Taiwanese chew betel nut, while only 300,000 people are scanned for oral cancer every year. Wu said the rate of oral cancer screening is less than 20 percent, yet the number of people diagnosed with oral cancer has increased annually. Scanning on a larger scale is necessary to ensure that the disease is discovered in the early stages, he said.
■ CRIME
Gun fired at Tsai's office
Police are looking for two individuals in connection with a gunfire scare outside the office of Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) Lawmaker Alex Tsai (蔡正元) in Nangang yesterday. No one was injured. Police said the suspects fired at the iron door of the office, which might have been intended as a warning to Tsai, who said yesterday that someone had fired a gun in the air outside his office before. Tsai said the two incidents may have been related to shareholding disputes at Central Motion Pictures Corp (CMPC, 中影公司). He said he had been informed that someone had sought help from gangsters to settle the disputes. The company is scheduled to hold a shareholders' meeting on Tuesday and to elect new board members. Tsai has been accused by former CMPC vice president Chuang Wan-chun (莊婉均) of stealing her shares in the corporation.
■ INFRASTRUCTURE
Freeways to be improved
The government will invest NT$100 billion (US$3 billion) over the next three years to improve existing freeways and construct new ones, Council for Economic Planning and Development officials said. Taking the Hsuehshan tunnel section of the Chiang Wei-Shui Freeway linking Taipei and Ilan as an example, the officials said that the total bi-directional traffic volume surpassed 14 million vehicles during the past year. The monthly traffic volume of the tunnel averages more than 1 million vehicles, while the weekly traffic volume averages more than 200,000 vehicles, the officials said. In addition, the Chiang Wei-Shui Freeway has greatly reduced the travel time between Taipei and Ilan and boosted tourism in the east, the officials said. An economic development plan said that the Executive Yuan will launch measures from this year through 2009 to provide a "safer, more comfortable" freeway network, the officials said.
■ SOCIETY
House fire kills four
A fire in Longtan (龍潭), Taoyuan County, yesterday claimed the lives of a pregnant woman and three of her children. Firemen were able to control the fire within 10 minutes of their arrival, but they could not save the family, the police said. The windows of the two-story house were covered with iron grating making escape impossible. The woman, surnamed Chung and her three children ran to the top of house for help where they died. The children were aged 4, 3 and 2. Chung's husband broke down when he was informed of their deaths, the police said. Two of Chung's children were spared because they were not at home at the time. Police said they were still investigating the cause of the fire.
■ CULTURE
Choir places in contest
The Taiwanese Earth Choir won second place in the children's chorus division at the 25th Cantonigros International Music Festival in Spain, the choir said on Friday. The Severacek Choir from the Czech Republic won first place at the festival, which was held from July 19 to July 22, with 47 music and dance groups from 32 different countries participating. Taiwanese representative to Spain Francisco Hwang (黃瀧元) traveled from Madrid to Cantonigros especially to root for the Taiwanese choir, which is comprised of 48 schoolchildren. The annual music festival started in 1983. According to the festival's organizers, this year's four-day competition attracted around 15,000 spectators, up 3,000 from last year's level. The Taiwanese delegation is still touring around Spain following the competition and is scheduled to return to the country tomorrow.
Foreign tourists who purchase a seven-day Taiwan Pass are to get a second one free of charge as part of a government bid to boost tourism, the Tourism Administration said yesterday. A pair of Taiwan Passes is priced at NT$5,000 (US$156.44), an agency staff member said, adding that the passes can be used separately. The pass can be used in many of Taiwan’s major cities and to travel to several tourist resorts. It expires seven days after it is first used. The pass is a three-in-one package covering the high-speed rail system, mass rapid transport (MRT) services and the Taiwan Tourist Shuttle services,
Drinking a lot of water or milk would not help a person who has ingested terbufos, a toxic chemical that has been identified as the likely cause of three deaths, a health expert said yesterday. An 83-year-old woman surnamed Tseng (曾) and two others died this week after eating millet dumplings with snails that Tseng had made. Tseng died on Tuesday and others ate the leftovers when they went to her home to mourn her death that evening. Twelve people became ill after eating the dumplings following Tseng’s death. Their symptoms included vomiting and convulsions. Six were hospitalized, with two of them
DIVA-READY: The city’s deadline for the repairs is one day before pop star Jody Chiang is to perform at the Taipei Dome for the city’s Double Ten National Day celebrations The Taipei City Government has asked Farglory Group (遠雄集團) to repair serious water leaks in the Taipei Dome before Friday next week, Taipei Mayor Chiang Wan-an (蔣萬安) said yesterday, following complaints that many areas at the stadium were leaking during two baseball games over the weekend. The dome on Saturday and Sunday hosted two games in tribute to CTBC Brothers’ star Chou Szu-chi (周思齊) ahead of his retirement from the CPBL. The games each attracted about 40,000 people, filling the stadium to capacity. However, amid heavy rain, many people reported water leaking on some seats, at the entrance and exit areas, and the
BIG collection: The herbarium holds more than 560,000 specimens, from the Japanese colonial period to the present, including the Wulai azalea, which is now extinct in the wild The largest collection of plant specimens in Taiwan, the Taipei Botanical Garden’s herbarium, is celebrating its 100th anniversary with an exhibition that opened on Friday. The herbarium provides critical historical documents for botanists and is the first of its kind in Taiwan, Taiwan Forestry Research Institute director Tseng Yen-hsueh (曾彥學) said. It is housed in a two-story red brick building, which opened during 1924. At the time, it stored 30,000 plant specimens from almost 6,000 species, including Taiwanese plant samples collected by Tomitaro Makino, the “father of Japanese botany,” Tseng said. The herbarium collection has grown in the century since its