Seven people were killed and 21 injured when a tour bus traveling from Taipei to Pingtung careened off a bridge on a highway in Kaohsiung County early yesterday, local police reports said.
The bus, carrying 27 passengers, collided with a pick-up truck on Highway No. 3 near Dashu Township (大樹) in Kaohsiung County, crashed into the retaining wall and fell off the bridge dropping more than 10m to the slope below, police said.
Seven people died in the crash, 21 were injured and the bus was severely damaged, police said.
The 44-year-old bus driver and his 12-year-old son were among the injured. The driver sustained a broken shoulder and injuries to his face, while his son’s chest was crushed, a doctor reported.
Five other people sustained major injuries, police said.
The driver of the pick-up truck that collided with the tour bus said he suspected that the bus was going too fast.
A female passenger on the bus, Chen Ji-ru (陳姬儒) who received minor injuries, said that most of the passengers were sleeping when the accident occurred at around 5:35am. She recalled hearing a lot of screaming and crying.
“I was stuck under a seat, my arms really hurt ... I kept hoping to see someone coming to rescue us, but it felt like I was waiting forever,” she said.
The bus, which is registered in Taipei County, left the Taipei Bus Station around midnight and was traveling south, carrying mostly workers from a company and their friends to the ceremonial burning of the Donggang King Boat in Pingtung County.
An initial investigation found that the bus was traveling at 120kph at the time of the accident, but a more comprehensive investigation will be carried out when the driver recovers, Kaohsiung district prosecutor Wang Sen-rong (王森榮) 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,