■SOCIETY
Glitch delays trains
More than 6,000 commuters on Taiwan Railway Administration (TRA) trains were late for work yesterday morning because of a faulty electrical wire between Cidu (七堵) and Sijhih (汐止). The nation’s largest railway service said the incident delayed 35 trains and forced it to cancel 10 rush hour commuter trains. Based on the TRA’s preliminary investigation, the incident was reported at 8:43am yesterday 200m north of Sijhih Station. By 11:30am, services resumed on both southbound and northbound lines.
■ POLITICS
NCC official questioned
Prosecutors yesterday questioned National Communications Commission (NCC) Secretary-General Wu Jia-huei (吳嘉輝) in connection with a bribery case. The Taipei District Prosecutor’s Office yesterday led officials from the Investigation Bureau to search the commission’s building, Wu’s home, the offices of King Mall Business Ltd and several other companies. They took Wu, two businessmen and three other witnesses in for questioning. Prosecutors alleged that Wu took more than NT$5 million (US$147,000) in bribes from companies that he was in charge of supervising from 2001 to 2007. Wu, who previously held posts at the Ministry of Transportation and Communications’ Directorate General of Telecommunications Traffic and the Government Information Office, is suspected of taking bribes from businessmen surnamed Miu (繆) and Chao (趙).
■ SOCIETY
Pingpu, lawmakers at odds
The Executive Yuan and Pingpu Aboriginal activists yesterday failed to reach an agreement on whether the government should grant official Aboriginal recognition to the Pingpus. The Pingpu — or plains Aborigines — are a group of Aboriginal tribes that once lived on the nation’s coastal flatlands. Most of them lost their ethnic identities and cultures over the past few hundred years because of close contact with the Han people. Some of them have launched a campaign to regain Aboriginal status, but the government has refused to grant them the status, saying they did not answer the government’s call to register their Aboriginal status in the 1950s and the 1960s.
■ TOURISM
Repatriated tourists return
The 38 Chinese visitors who were repatriated upon arrival in Taiwan on Saturday because they lacked valid entry permits re-entered Taiwan yesterday with the correct documentation via the small three links in Kinmen. Chiang Chi-duan (江志端), a division chief at the Tourism Bureau, denied the agency gave the group special treatment by finishing their applications within a day so they could enter the nation again.
■ CRIME
Prosecutors raid jail
Shilin District prosecutors yesterday searched the Shilin Detention Center on suspicion that officers acted as “judicial scalpers.” Yan Nai-wei (顏迺偉), spokesperson of the Shilin District Prosecutors Office, said the office received a tip that officers had been taking bribes in exchange for favors at the detention center. Yan said that some detainees used medical reports indicating that they had cancer in order to be bailed out. These reports were later found to be forged by officers. After they searched the detention center, they brought in 13 officers, detainees and men serving alternative military service for questioning.
Tropical Storm Nari is not a threat to Taiwan, based on its positioning and trajectory, the Central Weather Administration (CWA) said yesterday. Nari has strengthened from a tropical depression that was positioned south of Japan, it said. The eye of the storm is about 2,100km east of Taipei, with a north-northeast trajectory moving toward the eastern seaboard of Japan, CWA data showed. Based on its current path, the storm would not affect Taiwan, the agency said.
The Taipei Department of Health’s latest inspection of fresh fruit and vegetables sold in local markets revealed a 25 percent failure rate, with most contraventions involving excessive pesticide residues, while two durians were also found to contain heavy metal cadmium at levels exceeding safety limits. Health Food and Drug Division Director Lin Kuan-chen (林冠蓁) yesterday said the agency routinely conducts inspections of fresh produce sold at traditional markets, supermarkets, hypermarkets, retail outlets and restaurants, testing for pesticide residues and other harmful substances. In its most recent inspection, conducted in May, the department randomly collected 52 samples from various locations, with testing showing
Taipei and other northern cities are to host air-raid drills from 1:30pm to 2pm tomorrow as part of urban resilience drills held alongside the Han Kuang exercises, Taiwan’s largest annual military exercises. Taipei, New Taipei City, Keelung, Taoyuan, Yilan County, Hsinchu City and Hsinchu County are to hold the annual Wanan air defense exercise tomorrow, following similar drills held in central and southern Taiwan yesterday and today respectively. The Taipei Mass Rapid Transit (MRT) and Maokong Gondola are to run as usual, although stations and passenger parking lots would have an “entry only, no exit” policy once air raid sirens sound, Taipei
The government should improve children’s outdoor spaces and accelerate carbon reduction programs, as the risk of heat-related injury due to high summer temperatures rises each year, Greenpeace told a news conference yesterday. Greenpeace examined summer temperatures in Taipei, New Taipei City, Taoyuan, Hsinchu City, Taichung, Tainan and Kaohsiung to determine the effects of high temperatures and climate change on children’s outdoor activities, citing data garnered by China Medical University, which defines a wet-bulb globe temperature (WBGT) of 29°C or higher as posing the risk of heat-related injury. According to the Central Weather Administration, WBGT, commonly referred to as the heat index, estimates
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