People tend to forget all sorts of things when getting out of taxis in a hurry.
Fortunately for them, the Police Broadcasting Service (PBS) under the National Police Agency has for decades been a trusted place to turn to for retrieving lost articles.
Last year, the PBS helped recover more than 8,000 articles, including cellphones, satchels, computers, urns and even a severed finger.
The lost finger belonged to a man who was rushed to a hospital in a taxi, PBS director Huang Hu-tai (黃虎台) said.
“When he realized he had left his finger in the vehicle, the man called PBS and, luckily, the taxi driver had the radio on and managed to deliver the finger to the hospital in time,” Huang said.
Another taxi driver came to the station to hand over an urn and a card bearing the name of the deceased. When no one came looking for the ashes, PBS conducted a search through Taiwan’s household registration system and, with the help of some prayers, the station finally located the relatives of the deceased, Huang said.
With more and more Chinese visitors coming to Taiwan for tourism or business, it is not uncommon for taxi drivers to find articles left behind by them.
PBS once received a briefcase containing cash and luxury goods worth millions of US dollars, according to Huang. It turned out the briefcase belonged to Wang Xiaoguang (王小光), a Chinese tycoon.
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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