■ Transportation
Safety seats to be mandatory
Car-safety seats for children under four-years old will be mandatory after June 1, the Ministry of Transportation and Communications announced yesterday. An event to highlight the importance of child-car seats was held yesterday at Fishermen's Wharf in Tamshui, with more than 70 free child-safety seats given to infants born on April 4 and 61 seats awarded in a lottery. The activity was jointly sponsored by the ministry, the Jinchuen Children's Safety Foundation and the Car Safety Association. As of June 1, any child under four years of age and weighing under 18kg will be required to use a car-safety seat. Parents who ignore the law will be fined NT$500, according to the Committee of Traffic Safety Supervision. Police will step up monitoring of the use of safety seats in places frequented by families, the official added. In Taiwan, car accidents claim the majority of children killed in accidents, according to statistics.
■ Finance
Money for credit unions
The Council of Agriculture has decided to earmark NT$300 million (US$9.1 million) this year to assist the troubled credit units of 36 farmers' and fishermen's associations, according to a council official. Since an initiative to reform grassroots financial institutions began in 2001, the council has allocated NT$1.05 billion to farmers' and fishermen's associations that have been taken over by the government, the official said. Over the past three years, the government's efforts to reform the 36 cash-poor farmers' and fishermen's associations in 11 cities and counties have paid off, with their credit profiles gradually improving, the official said.
■ Media
Anchorwoman back home
Liu Hai-juo (劉海若), a news anchorwoman who was severely injured in a train crash in Britain nearly two years ago says she has recovered and hopes to be back on the air soon. Liu was in a coma for two months after the May 2002 accident, which killed seven people and injured more than 70 others. She was transferred to China and spent 21 months at a Beijing hospital where she was treated by a brain specialist. "I am so glad to be back," Liu told ETTV Cable News upon her return to Taipei on Saturday night. "Many of my viewers have expressed worries about me, and I hope to be back at work soon and meet them on the air," she said. The 36-year-old anchorwoman for Hong Kong-based Phoenix Satellite Television said the network hasn't lined up any shows for her yet.
■ Media
Director weds at festival
World renowned environ-mentalist film director Steve Lichtag married his fiancee in a traditional Chinese wedding yesterday in Ilan, stealing the show at an international "green" film festival that recently opened in the city. Lichtag, whose films and videos have been regular prize winners at the ENVIROFILM Festival, married Marcela Kordova in a village near the Dongshan River in Ilan County, with the wife of Ilan County Commissioner Liu Shou-cheng (劉守成) administering the ceremony. About 10 other directors or producers from around the world who were also prize winners of the ENVIROFILM Festival and had been invited by Ilan authorities for this year's Ilan Green International Film Festival performed a lion dance during the wedding party. Among Lichtag's famous films on environmental protection and improvement are The Great White and In Search of the Crystal World. The Ilan Green International Film Festival will run until this Friday.
Death row inmate Huang Lin-kai (黃麟凱), who was convicted for the double murder of his former girlfriend and her mother, is to be executed at the Taipei Detention Center tonight, the Ministry of Justice announced. Huang, who was a military conscript at the time, was convicted for the rape and murder of his ex-girlfriend, surnamed Wang (王), and the murder of her mother, after breaking into their home on Oct. 1, 2013. Prosecutors cited anger over the breakup and a dispute about money as the motives behind the double homicide. This is the first time that Minister of Justice Cheng Ming-chien (鄭銘謙) has
BITTERLY COLD: The inauguration ceremony for US president-elect Donald Trump has been moved indoors due to cold weather, with the new venue lacking capacity A delegation of cross-party lawmakers from Taiwan, led by Legislative Speaker Han Kuo-yu (韓國瑜), for the inauguration of US president-elect Donald Trump, would not be able to attend the ceremony, as it is being moved indoors due to forecasts of intense cold weather in Washington tomorrow. The inauguration ceremony for Trump and US vice president-elect JD Vance is to be held inside the Capitol Rotunda, which has a capacity of about 2,000 people. A person familiar with the issue yesterday said although the outdoor inauguration ceremony has been relocated, Taiwan’s legislative delegation has decided to head off to Washington as scheduled. The delegation
TRANSPORT CONVENIENCE: The new ticket gates would accept a variety of mobile payment methods, and buses would be installed with QR code readers for ease of use New ticketing gates for the Taipei metro system are expected to begin service in October, allowing users to swipe with cellphones and select credit cards partnered with Taipei Rapid Transit Corp (TRTC), the company said on Tuesday. TRTC said its gates in use are experiencing difficulty due to their age, as they were first installed in 2007. Maintenance is increasingly expensive and challenging as the manufacturing of components is halted or becoming harder to find, the company said. Currently, the gates only accept EasyCard, iPass and electronic icash tickets, or one-time-use tickets purchased at kiosks, the company said. Since 2023, the company said it
Another wave of cold air would affect Taiwan starting from Friday and could evolve into a continental cold mass, the Central Weather Administration (CWA) said yesterday. Temperatures could drop below 10°C across Taiwan on Monday and Tuesday next week, CWA forecaster Chang Chun-yao (張竣堯) said. Seasonal northeasterly winds could bring rain, he said. Meanwhile, due to the continental cold mass and radiative cooling, it would be cold in northern and northeastern Taiwan today and tomorrow, according to the CWA. From last night to this morning, temperatures could drop below 10°C in northern Taiwan, it said. A thin coat of snow
RSS