■CRIME
Taxis install SOS buttons
Thousands of taxis in Taipei plan to install emergency reporting gear following the grisly killing of a taxi driver by five youths earlier this week, the Liberty Times (the Taipei Times’ sister paper) reported yesterday. As Taipei’s radio taxis are already equipped with global positioning systems (GPS), after a driver pushes an SOS button beside the steering wheel, dispatchers will be able to determine where the taxi is and alert police to the location. When switched on, the emergency reporting gear can also serve as a microphone so that dispatchers can hear inside the vehicle. The plans were prompted by the slaying of a taxi driver in Taichung, the Liberty Times reported. On Wednesday, five youths aged 15 to 21 years old attacked a taxi driver in Taichung and robbed him of NT$1,900. The suspects stabbed the driver 31 times, dumped him in the mountains and drove off with his taxi. The driver bled to death and police arrested the five youths later on Wednesday.
■HEALTH
CPC wants caffeine labels
With the increasing popularity of fresh-brewed coffee, now one of the most popular drinks, chain coffee shops and convenience stores that sell fresh-brewed coffee have been urged to provide labels that include caffeine content. The Consumer Protection Commission (CPC) has renewed a call for convenience stores to follow a voluntary labeling system that coffee stores adopted in August 2006 when they agreed with the CPC’s proposal to use the colors red, yellow and green to denote different levels of caffeine content. CPC official Liu Ching-fang (劉清芳) said yesterday that the proposal was based on research by the EU Scientific Committee on Food that suggested caffeine consumption of under 300mg per day was not harmful to the health. Under the system, the green label marks a caffeine content of under 100mg, while yellow represents between 100mg and 200mg and red signals more than 200mg of caffeine, Liu said.
■CRIME
Malaysia charges suspects
A Malaysian court has charged four Taiwanese men with trafficking 1,439kg of drugs worth US$16.4 million, news reports said yesterday. The four chemists, aged 30 to 36 years old, pleaded not guilty to the charge of trafficking the hypnotic drug nimetazepam, better known as Erimin or Erimin 5, the Bernama news agency reported. If found guilty, the four men face mandatory death sentences by hanging. The seizure, recorded as the biggest drug haul in the country, came during a March 22 raid on a factory in the southern state of Johor. Nimetazepan was originally made to treat insomnia but is often sold in Asia as a substitute for ecstasy. Police also seized machines used to process the drugs, about 430kg of powder used in manufacturing the drug and thousands of pills in the raid.
■DIPLOMACY
Ma plans video conference
President Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九) will hold a video conference with US think tanks from the Presidential Office late this month to mark the 30th anniversary of the Taiwan Relations Act. Presidential Office spokesman Wang Yu-chi made the announcement after Ma received Arthur Brooks, president of the American Enterprise Institute (AEI), a few days ago and expressed hopes that the AEI would hold activities to discuss issues related to the act as it is a key element of US policy toward Taiwan. This would be the first overseas video conference Ma has held since taking office.
An apartment building in New Taipei City’s Sanchong District (三重) collapsed last night after a nearby construction project earlier in the day allegedly caused it to tilt. Shortly after work began at 9am on an ongoing excavation of a construction site on Liuzhang Street (六張街), two neighboring apartment buildings tilted and cracked, leading to exterior tiles peeling off, city officials said. The fire department then dispatched personnel to help evacuate 22 residents from nine households. After the incident, the city government first filled the building at No. 190, which appeared to be more badly affected, with water to stabilize the
Taiwan plans to cull as many as 120,000 invasive green iguanas this year to curb the species’ impact on local farmers, the Ministry of Agriculture said. Chiu Kuo-hao (邱國皓), a section chief in the ministry’s Forestry and Nature Conservation Agency, on Sunday said that green iguanas have been recorded across southern Taiwan and as far north as Taichung. Although there is no reliable data on the species’ total population in the country, it has been estimated to be about 200,000, he said. Chiu said about 70,000 iguanas were culled last year, including about 45,000 in Pingtung County, 12,000 in Tainan, 9,900 in
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
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
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