■ENVIRONMENT
EPA: Don’t flush toilet paper
Toilet paper should go into trash bins instead of the toilet bowl, the Environmental Protection Administration (EPA) said yesterday, countering recent media reports calling on the public to flush used tissue paper to “reduce the amount of trash because tissues disintegrate in water.” “With an 18 percent connection rate of Taiwan’s buildings to the underground sewage pipes, more than 60 percent of homes still rely on septic tanks to process sewage,” said Chen Hsien-heng (陳咸亨), director-general of the EPA’s water quality protection department. “However, tissue paper in septic tanks increases the pollution density of the waste and in turn worsens the overall water quality of rivers [where waste in septic tanks end up],” Chen said. This is true even if products are labeled “biodegradable,” Chen said. To instill in people good habits and to avoid confusion, the EPA advises against throwing anything into toilet bowls.
■CRIME
KMT legislator charged
The Taichung Public Prosecutors Office indicted Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) Legislator Justin Huang (黃健庭) on Friday on charges of taking bribes between 2004 and 2005 during his previous legislative term. Prosecutors said they were seeking a 10-year sentence for Huang, who was indicted for accepting more than NT$2 million (US$63,640) in bribes from two pharmaceutical companies to lobby on their behalf to obtain approval from the Bureau of National Health Insurance (BNHI) to change the brand-name of one of the company’s products. The BNHI also agreed to the price the company sought for prescriptions of the medicine. The KMT lawmaker later used dummy employee accounts to accept more than NT$1 million in “salaries” paid by the two companies.
■LEISURE
Boy finishes bicycling tour
Seven-year-old Chiu En-chia (邱恩加) from Tainan City recently completed a cycling tour that took him across Germany and the Netherlands and earned him the title of the youngest Taiwanese to complete a cycling trip of more than 1,000 km. Chiu and his parents were part of a special tour group that cycled along the Rhine River from Frankfurt in Germany to Amsterdam in the Netherlands in 29 days, starting June 29, local media reported yesterday. Chiu’s parents said they still could not believe that their son, who graduated from kindergarten this summer, completed the 1,000km journey. Chiu broke the record of Hsu Chan-jen (許湛然) of Taiwan, who cycled 1,022km in 30 days across Germany and Denmark at the age of nine with his parents last summer. After he returned home, Hsu published an account of his journey, entitled Family Travel by Bike — A Boy’s Cycling Diary.
■SOCIETY
Percentage of disabled rises
The number of citizens with physical or mental disabilities has continued to increase, having climbed to 4.47 percent of the country’s population at the end of June, a report by the Ministry of the Interior said on Friday. The figure rose from 4.37 percent at the end of June last year and 3.37 percent at the end of 2001, the report stated. At the end of June, the number of registered disabled individuals totaled 1.027 million, up 26,000, or 2.6 percent, over the year-earlier level. Of these disabled individuals, those with limb disorders formed the largest group, accounting for 38.9 percent of the total disabled population.
Taiwan was listed in 14th place among the world's wealthiest country in terms of GDP per capita, in the latest rankings released on Monday by Forbes magazine. Taiwan's GDP per capita was US$76,860, which put it at No. 14 on the list of the World's 100 Richest Countries this year, one spot above Hong Kong with US$75,130. The magazine's list of the richest countries in the world is compiled based on GDP per capita data, as estimated by the IMF. However, for a more precise measure of a nation's wealth, the magazine also considers purchasing power parity, which is a metric used to
Taiwan yesterday expelled four China Coast Guard vessels that entered Taiwan-controlled restricted waters off Lienchiang County (Matsu) shortly after the Chinese People’s Liberation Army announced the start of its “Joint Sword-2024B” drills around Taiwan. The Coast Guard Administration (CGA) said in a statement that it had detected two China Coast Guard ships west of Nangan Island (南竿) and another two north of Dongyin Island (東引) at 8am yesterday. After Chinese ships sailed into restricted waters off Matsu shortly afterward, the CGA’s Kinmen-Matsu-Penghu Branch deployed four patrol vessels to shadow and approach the vessels, it said. The incidents pushed up to 44 the number
Renovations on the B3 concourse of Taipei Main Station are to begin on Nov. 1, with travelers advised to use entrances near the Taiwan Railway or high-speed rail platforms or information counter to access the MRT’s Red Line. Construction is to be completed before the end of next year, Taipei Rapid Transit Corp said last week. To reduce the impact on travelers, the NT$95 million (US$2.95 million) project is to be completed in four stages, it said. In the first stage, the hall leading to the Blue Line near the art exhibition area is to be closed from Nov. 1 to the end
Taipei’s Ximending (西門町) shopping area welcomed the most international visitors, followed by Taipei 101, Songshan Cultural and Creative Park and Yangmingshan National Park (陽明山國家公園), a list of the city’s most popular tourist attractions published by the Taipei Department of Information and Tourism showed. As of August, 69.22 million people had visited Taipei’s main tourism spots, a 76 percent increase from 39.33 million in the same period last year, department data showed. Ximending had 20.21 million visitors, followed by Taipei 101 at 8.09 million, Songshan Cultural and Creative Park at 6.28 million, Yangmingshan at 4.51 million and the Red House Theater (西門紅樓) in
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