TRANSPORTATION
Big bikes face usage hurdle
Heavy motorcycles with engines over 550cc will not be allowed on freeways unless local governments agree to the traffic regulations passed by the Legislature last year, Ministry of Transportation and Communications Deputy Minister Yeh Kuang-shih (葉匡時) said yesterday. The majority of local governments were opposed to the regulations because of safety concerns, and the transportation ministry is still in discussions with them on issues such as road sections and time slots for heavy bikes, Yeh said. The new regulations were expected to be implemented next month, after the Legislature amended the Road Traffic Management and Punishment Act (道路交通管理處罰條例) in November last year to allow bikes of 550cc and over on Taiwan’s highways. In 2007, the government revised its regulations, permitting motorcycles of 550cc and bigger to travel on 26 expressways throughout the country.
ENTERTAINMENT
Balloon festival begins
A festival featuring hot-air balloons was launched on Saturday in Taitung County’s Luye Township (鹿野), showcasing 21 hot-air balloons from 13 countries, including the US, Canada, Switzerland, France, Spain and Brazil. The festival, to run until Sept. 2, also includes a hot-air balloon exhibition, light and sound shows featuring hot-air balloons, music concerts, kite-flying and paragliding demonstrations, and lectures and courses on balloons. The best time to watch the balloons displays is from 6am to 9am and 4pm to 7pm, according to the Taitung County Government, which organized the festival. Among the 47 balloon pilots invited to participate in the second annual festival is Wu Chin-yeh (吳金曄), Taiwan’s first female hot-air balloon pilot and one of the first five Taiwanese trained by the county government as a hot-air balloon pilot.
CULTURE
U-Theatre travels abroad
U-Theatre, a renowned Taiwanese arts group, has been invited to take part in a summer festival in Dammam, Saudi Arabia, and will give five performances there from Wednesday to Sunday, a spokeswoman for the troupe said yesterday. It will be the first performance by a professional Taiwanese arts group in the Middle Eastern country, U-Theatre said. U-Theatre, renowned for its unique combination of drumming, Zen meditation and martial arts, will perform its well-known production Sound of the Ocean, as requested by the organizers. However, due to time constraints and cultural customs, the 85-minute production will be shortened to 55 minutes and all the parts will be performed by men for the first time in the troupe’s history, it said. In addition, they will all wear long-sleeved tops and pants instead of the usual traditional costumes, Artistic Director Liu Ruo-yu (劉若瑀) said.
MILITARY
Twenty ships put to rest
Taiwan Sunday decommissioned the last 20 of a fleet of ageing missile boats as part of ongoing efforts to modernize its military forces, officials said. The navy bid farewell to the 50 tonne Seagull-class missile boats during a ceremony held in the southern Zuoying (左營) naval base, more than three decades after they had been put into service. The Taiwanese navy first built the missile boats, reportedly an imitation of Israel’s Dvora-class patrol boats, in the late 1970s and later mass produced them in the early 1980s. The navy had thought the fleet, numbering about 50, would act as “hit and run” boats should a conflict break out in the Taiwan Strait.
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,