■ EVENTS
Da-an flower show opens
The annual Taipei Flower Show at Da-an Forest Park kicked off yesterday, featuring various performances and activities. Called "Discover Paradise," the exhibition runs through Jan. 20. It showcases more than 270,000 flowers, with 13 different exhibition zones featuring creative flower displays from coffee cups to alligators. DIY and other family activities, magic shows, flower tea drinking games, and music and dance performances are also featured, the Taipei City Government said. Taipei Mayor Hau Lung-bin (郝龍斌) said the city government would continue to promote floriculture by hosting more flower shows and an international flower exposition in 2010. Visitors can also win prizes while spending quality time with the family. The show is open from 9am to 5pm.
■ TRANSPORT
Kids receive free trips
A group of children benefitted yesterday from free trips provided by three major transportation companies. China Airlines, Mandarin Airlines and Taiwan High Speed Rail Corp jointly sponsored 110 socially disadvantaged children to travel between Taipei City and Kaohsiung City by airplane and high speed rail. The children visited several tourist attractions including Taipei 101, Taipei Zoo and the Maokong Gondola, as well as Kaohsiung Harbor and the Dream-Mall shopping mall.
■ TRANSPORT
Violation tallies released
Riders of motorcycles over 550cc have committed 76 traffic violations while traveling legally on expressways in Taipei City over the past 50 days, according to tallies released on Thursday by the city's traffic police. The tallies, which looked at the expressways since they were opened to heavy motorcycles on Nov. 1, show that speeding accounted for 65 of the violations. In one of the most extreme cases, a rider was caught riding at 121kph while traveling near Huachung Bridge on the Huanhe Expressway, where the speed limit is 60kph, traffic police said. During the same period, the number of traffic violations by heavy motorcycles on ordinary roads amounted to 357, including 288 speeding violations, the data showed.
■ ENVIRONMENT
Wetland turned into habitat
A wetland that has been developed into a natural wastewater treatment area through ecological engineering in Taipei County has also been turned into a natural habitat for wildlife. The 13-hectare wetland, known as the Da Niao Pi Wetland (打鳥埤溼地), was the recipient of the 2007 Ford Motor Co Conservation and Environmental Grant for Excellence. Built between November 2005 and December last year, the wetland can treat some 11,000 tonnes of wastewater discharged into the Tamshui River by communities in Taipei County per day, with a cleansing rate of 60 percent. Kuo Hua-jen (郭華仁), a professor at National Taiwan University, provided the Taipei County Environmental Protection Bureau with the technological know-how to grow endemic wild rice on the wetland, efforts that have already borne fruit over the past year, said Hsiao Tien-kun (蕭天焜), a bureau inspector. Hsiao said the wetland has become a wildlife conservation habitat for wetland and migrant birds such as the common moorhen, a water bird that inhabits paddy fields, mangroves and wetland areas, the little grebe, the common teal and the rarely seen jacana, among others.
DEEPER REVIEW: After receiving 19 hospital reports of suspected food poisoning, the Taipei Department of Health applied for an epidemiological investigation A buffet restaurant in Taipei’s Xinyi District (信義) is to be fined NT$3 million (US$91,233) after it remained opened despite an order to suspend operations following reports that 32 people had been treated for suspected food poisoning, the Taipei Department of Health said yesterday. The health department said it on Tuesday received reports from hospitals of people who had suspected food poisoning symptoms, including nausea, vomiting, stomach pain and diarrhea, after they ate at an INPARADISE (饗饗) branch in Breeze Xinyi on Sunday and Monday. As more than six people who ate at the restaurant sought medical treatment, the department ordered the
A strong continental cold air mass and abundant moisture bringing snow to mountains 3,000m and higher over the past few days are a reminder that more than 60 years ago Taiwan had an outdoor ski resort that gradually disappeared in part due to climate change. On Oct. 24, 2021, the National Development Council posted a series of photographs on Facebook recounting the days when Taiwan had a ski resort on Hehuanshan (合歡山) in Nantou County. More than 60 years ago, when developing a branch of the Central Cross-Island Highway, the government discovered that Hehuanshan, with an elevation of more than 3,100m,
Taiwan’s population last year shrank further and births continued to decline to a yearly low, the Ministry of the Interior announced today. The ministry published the 2024 population demographics statistics, highlighting record lows in births and bringing attention to Taiwan’s aging population. The nation’s population last year stood at 23,400,220, a decrease of 20,222 individuals compared to 2023. Last year, there were 134,856 births, representing a crude birth rate of 5.76 per 1,000 people, a slight decline from 2023’s 135,571 births and 5.81 crude birth rate. This decrease of 715 births resulted in a new record low per the ministry’s data. Since 2016, which saw
SECURITY: To protect the nation’s Internet cables, the navy should use buoys marking waters within 50m of them as a restricted zone, a former navy squadron commander said A Chinese cargo ship repeatedly intruded into Taiwan’s contiguous and sovereign waters for three months before allegedly damaging an undersea Internet cable off Kaohsiung, a Liberty Times (sister paper of the Taipei Times) investigation revealed. Using publicly available information, the Liberty Times was able to reconstruct the Shunxing-39’s movements near Taiwan since Double Ten National Day last year. Taiwanese officials did not respond to the freighter’s intrusions until Friday last week, when the ship, registered in Cameroon and Tanzania, turned off its automatic identification system shortly before damage was inflicted to a key cable linking Taiwan to the rest of
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