■ Culture
Beer festival in Tainan
A two-day beer festival will begin on Saturday at the Shanhua brewery in Tainan County, officials from the Taiwan Tobacco and Liquor Corp said yesterday. The festival will feature 10 dishes seasoned with beer, such as sticky rice, stewed "Tungpo" meat and seafood. In addition to beer tasting, a host of other activities, including singing contests and parent-child painting contests, will be staged during the festival.
■ Environment
Incinerator plans assailed
Taiwan Solidarity Union Legislator Chiu Teh-hong (邱德宏) said yesterday that the government should scrap plans to build six garbage incinerators. Chiu and representatives of environ-mental protection groups said at the Legislative Yuan that the projects were too costly and that expanding the "zero-garbage" campaign and ending the Environ-mental Protection Adminis-tration's "one county or city, one incinerator" policy would be a better solution to the problem of garbage disposal. He suggested the government concentrate on recycling programs. The incinerators the groups want to prevent from being built are planned for Hsinchu, Miaoli, Yunlin, Nantou, Penghu and Taitung.
■ Politics
Constituency reform urged
Taiwan Solidarity Union (TSU) lawmaker Chen Chien-ming (陳建銘) yester-day urged the administrative sector to properly handle the re-demarcation of electoral constituencies to cope with a new electoral system for legislators. Chen urged the administrative branch to demarcate the electoral constituencies by population to highlight fairness, and his idea was shared by several legislators among different political parties. According to the revisions to the Constitution, the seventh legislature beginning from 2008 will see the number of seats reduced from the current 225 to 113, while the electoral system will also be changed from the current multiple seats for each constituency to a single seat, two ballot system.
■ Diplomacy
PM's words called `hurtful'
Three Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) legislators urged new Singapore Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong (李顯龍) yesterday to stop making remarks which they regard as hurtful to Taiwan. Legislators Tsai Chi-fang (蔡啟芳), Lin Chung-mo (林重謨) and Hou Shui-sheng (侯水盛) made the appeal after Lee said in a Singapore National Day speech Sunday that China has made it clear that it will react if Taiwan moves toward independence and that "if a war breaks out across the Strait, we will be forced to choose between the two sides ... but if the conflict is provoked by Taiwan, then Singapore cannot support Taiwan."
■ Crime
Kaohsiung drug lab raided
Investigation Bureau agents arrested two suspects during a raid on a large underground drug manufacturing factory in Kaohsiung Monday. The agents also seized 65kg of amphetamines and around 5kg of methedrine, the main ingredient in the manufacture of amphetamines, as well as manufacturing equipment with a market value of around NT$100 million (US$2.94 million). The agents were tipped off three months ago that a man, surnamed Pieh, who is skilled in the manufacturing of amphet-amines and who was jailed several times previously for making the illegal drug, was again collaborating with gangsters to manufacture the substance.
A magnitude 6.4 earthquake struck off the coast of Hualien County in eastern Taiwan at 7pm yesterday, the Central Weather Administration (CWA) said. The epicenter of the temblor was at sea, about 69.9km south of Hualien County Hall, at a depth of 30.9km, it said. There were no immediate reports of damage resulting from the quake. The earthquake’s intensity, which gauges the actual effect of a temblor, was highest in Taitung County’s Changbin Township (長濱), where it measured 5 on Taiwan’s seven-tier intensity scale. The quake also measured an intensity of 4 in Hualien, Nantou, Chiayi, Yunlin, Changhua and Miaoli counties, as well as
Taiwan is to have nine extended holidays next year, led by a nine-day Lunar New Year break, the Cabinet announced yesterday. The nine-day Lunar New Year holiday next year matches the length of this year’s holiday, which featured six extended holidays. The increase in extended holidays is due to the Act on the Implementation of Commemorative and Festival Holidays (紀念日及節日實施條例), which was passed early last month with support from the opposition Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) and Taiwan People’s Party. Under the new act, the day before Lunar New Year’s Eve is also a national holiday, and Labor Day would no longer be limited
COMMITMENTS: The company had a relatively low renewable ratio at 56 percent and did not have any goal to achieve 100 percent renewable energy, the report said Pegatron Corp ranked the lowest among five major final assembly suppliers in progressing toward Apple Inc’s commitment to be 100 percent carbon neutral by 2030, a Greenpeace East Asia report said yesterday. While Apple has set the goal of using 100 percent renewable energy across its entire business, supply chain and product lifecycle by 2030, carbon emissions from electronics manufacturing are rising globally due to increased energy consumption, it said. Given that carbon emissions from its supply chain accounted for more than half of its total emissions last year, Greenpeace East Asia evaluated the green transition performance of Apple’s five largest final
The first tropical storm of the year in the western North Pacific, Wutip (蝴蝶), has formed over the South China Sea and is expected to move toward Hainan Island off southern China, the Central Weather Administration (CWA) said today. The agency said a tropical depression over waters near the Paracel and Zhongsha islands strengthened into a tropical storm this morning. The storm had maximum sustained winds near its center of 64.8kph, with peak gusts reaching 90kph, it said. Winds at Beaufort scale level 7 — ranging from 50kph to 61.5kph — extended up to 80km from the center, it added. Forecaster Kuan Hsin-ping
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