■EDUCATION
MOE urges debt payment
The Ministry of Education (MOE) yesterday urged students to remember to pay off their student loans regularly. Tsai Chung-yi (蔡忠益), section chief of the MOE’s Department of Higher Education, said university presidents should pay extra attention to students’ bad debt and remind them that failure to pay their student loans would have a negative impact on their credit rating. The ministry’s call came after the latest MOE statistics showed that unpaid student debt had reached NT$4.4 billion (US$130.6 million) and was expected to exceed NT$4.5 billion by the end of the year. The majority of the bad debt came from private universities, with Feng Chia University, Chia Nan University of Pharmacy and Science, Fu Jen Catholic University, Southern Taiwan University and Tamkang University topping the list, MOE statistics showed.
■HEALTH
Indoor air in spotlight
The legislative Social Welfare and Environmental Hygiene Committee yesterday commenced the first discussion on the pending indoor air quality management bill. However, no conclusions were reached and the committee decided to host follow-up meetings soon. As people on average spend more than 90 percent of their time indoors, the law will regulate maximum contents of pollutants in indoor air, such as carbon monoxide, carbon dioxide, germs and methane. However, yesterday legislators were split on whether germs should be listed as a pollutant, whether hospitals and medical agencies should also be regulated by the proposed law and whether the Environmental Protection Administration possesses adequate equipment to assess indoor air quality. As such, the committee decided to hold a further meeting in the future to involve health authorities in the discussion.
■HEALTH
Hepatitis check for vendors
The Centers for Disease Control (CDC) announced yesterday it would begin issuing “Hepatitis A-free” labels to food vendors at Shilin and Keelung night markets who have completed the CDC’s vaccine course. CDC spokesman Shih Wen-yi (施文儀) said that the program was aimed at assuring customers of hygiene standards, as hepatitis A can spread through water and food. There are approximately 200 new cases of Hepatitis A diagnosed each year. Shih said the CDC began to encourage vendors at the two night markets to get innoculated last year. Vendors who have had both shots will be issued the label. Shih also encouraged food vendors at other night markets to be vaccinated.
■CRIME
Cops nab money man
Police have arrested a 55-year-old man for lobbing bank notes worth about NT$1 million (US$29,600) from vehicles, causing disorder in the streets, an officer said yesterday. The man tossed the bills from a taxi in Taichung City on Sunday, causing people to pick up the cash, a Changhua police official said. He is believed to have thrown more money on an earlier road trip starting in Taipei. The man also burned about NT$400,000 and had two more sacks of cash, apparently the proceeds of a property sale, police said. Some passers-by who picked up the bills turned the money over to police, while others pocketed it, he said. The taxi driver turned the man in to police in Changhua County. The suspect was to be charged with public endangerment and destruction of currency, police said.
Taiwanese were praised for their composure after a video filmed by Taiwanese tourists capturing the moment a magnitude 7.5 earthquake struck Japan’s Aomori Prefecture went viral on social media. The video shows a hotel room shaking violently amid Monday’s quake, with objects falling to the ground. Two Taiwanese began filming with their mobile phones, while two others held the sides of a TV to prevent it from falling. When the shaking stopped, the pair calmly took down the TV and laid it flat on a tatami mat, the video shows. The video also captured the group talking about the safety of their companions bathing
US climber Alex Honnold is to attempt to scale Taipei 101 without a rope and harness in a live Netflix special on Jan. 24, the streaming platform announced on Wednesday. Accounting for the time difference, the two-hour broadcast of Honnold’s climb, called Skyscraper Live, is to air on Jan. 23 in the US, Netflix said in a statement. Honnold, 40, was the first person ever to free solo climb the 900m El Capitan rock formation in Yosemite National Park — a feat that was recorded and later made into the 2018 documentary film Free Solo. Netflix previewed Skyscraper Live in October, after videos
Starting on Jan. 1, YouBike riders must have insurance to use the service, and a six-month trial of NT$5 coupons under certain conditions would be implemented to balance bike shortages, a joint statement from transportation departments across Taipei, New Taipei City and Taoyuan announced yesterday. The rental bike system operator said that coupons would be offered to riders to rent bikes from full stations, for riders who take out an electric-assisted bike from a full station, and for riders who return a bike to an empty station. All riders with YouBike accounts are automatically eligible for the program, and each membership account
A classified Pentagon-produced, multiyear assessment — the Overmatch brief — highlighted unreported Chinese capabilities to destroy US military assets and identified US supply chain choke points, painting a disturbing picture of waning US military might, a New York Times editorial published on Monday said. US Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth’s comments in November last year that “we lose every time” in Pentagon-conducted war games pitting the US against China further highlighted the uncertainty about the US’ capability to intervene in the event of a Chinese invasion of Taiwan. “It shows the Pentagon’s overreliance on expensive, vulnerable weapons as adversaries field cheap, technologically
RSS