■ TRANSPORTATION
Use of public transport rising
Ridership on Taipei’s public transportation systems, including the MRT and city buses, will reach 1.2 billion by the end of this year, up from 1.1 billion last year, Taipei Department of Transportation Commissioner Luo Shiaw-shyan (羅孝賢) said yesterday. As oil prices increase and the economy remains in a recession, more people are choosing to take buses or the subway instead of driving, he said. The percentage of car drivers in the city this year dropped to 16 percent, compared with 20 percent last year, he said. The percentage of motorscooter riders rose to 34 percent, from 29 percent last year, Luo said, adding that more people were likely driving scooters because they were cheaper to drive than automobiles. But the number of people riding scooters could drop because of difficulties in finding parking space, he said.
■ SOCIETY
Store elevator traps 15
An elevator malfunction in the Far Eastern Department Store in Banciao (板橋), Taipei County, trapped 15 customers for an hour yesterday before they were rescued. The elevator stopped between floors at 3:50pm as it was rising from the B2 level to B1. The trapped passengers pressed the emergency button and waited for rescue. The fire department said it planned to break down the doors to free the customers, but fearing there might have been more people in the elevator than maximum capacity allowed, elevator mechanics had to secure the car’s position first. The mechanics were able to pry open a narrow opening after 20 minutes and remove two children. After the car’s position was secured, firefighters were able to force open the doors and free the remaining 13 people. Each trapped customer was given a NT$500 gift certificate by the store as an apology. The store said the elevator underwent routine maintenance, and the cause of the malfunction was under investigation.
■ SPORTS
Kaohsiung backs baseball
Kaohsiung City’s Education Bureau has drawn up a plan to boost baseball in the city, bureau Director-General Tsai Ching-hwa (蔡清華) said yesterday. The bureau had reached a consensus with the National University of Kaohsiung last month to establish a college of sports at the school and the university had agreed to organize a team to take part in the Major League of College Baseball, she said. Other plans included establishment of a kids’ baseball team in each of the city’s 11 districts, renovation of the Lite Baseball Field and providing stipends for 20 coaches, the bureau said. Kaohsiung has about four to five youth baseball teams and two junior baseball teams, but the city government wants teams at all school levels. The plan will cost NT$36 million (US$1 million) annually, the bureau said.
■ CRIME
Cannabis farm raided
Police found a cannabis farm in a mountain area in Hsinyi Township (信義), Nantou County, on Saturday. The 2,425m² farm was believed to be the largest of its kind ever found in Taiwan, with 1,500 plants, police said. Six hundred plants had already been dried into marijuana. With a market price of NT$200,000 per kilogram, the plants had a market value of more than NT$30 million, police said. Police received a tip about the farm a couple of days ago. Ten officers raided the farm on Saturday morning, and nabbed four people as they slept in a tool shed. The cannabis plants were 2.5m tall on average, rather than the normal 1m, the police said.
GREAT POWER COMPETITION: Beijing views its military cooperation with Russia as a means to push back against the joint power of the US and its allies, an expert said A recent Sino-Russian joint air patrol conducted over the waters off Alaska was designed to counter the US military in the Pacific and demonstrated improved interoperability between Beijing’s and Moscow’s forces, a national security expert said. National Defense University associate professor Chen Yu-chen (陳育正) made the comment in an article published on Wednesday on the Web site of the Journal of the Chinese Communist Studies Institute. China and Russia sent four strategic bombers to patrol the waters of the northern Pacific and Bering Strait near Alaska in late June, one month after the two nations sent a combined flotilla of four warships
‘LEADERS’: The report highlighted C.C. Wei’s management at TSMC, Lisa Su’s decisionmaking at AMD and the ‘rock star’ status of Nvidia’s Huang Time magazine on Thursday announced its list of the 100 most influential people in artificial intelligence (AI), which included Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC) chairman and chief executive officer C.C. Wei (魏哲家), Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang (黃仁勳) and AMD chair and CEO Lisa Su (蘇姿丰). The list is divided into four categories: Leaders, Innovators, Shapers and Thinkers. Wei and Huang were named in the Leaders category. Other notable figures in the Leaders category included Google CEO Sundar Pichai, Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella, OpenAI CEO Sam Altman and Meta CEO and Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg. Su was listed in the Innovators category. Time highlighted Wei’s
EVERYONE’S ISSUE: Kim said that during a visit to Taiwan, she asked what would happen if China attacked, and was told that the global economy would shut down Taiwan is critical to the global economy, and its defense is a “here and now” issue, US Representative Young Kim said during a roundtable talk on Taiwan-US relations on Friday. Kim, who serves on the US House of Representatives’ Foreign Affairs Committee, held a roundtable talk titled “Global Ties, Local Impact: Why Taiwan Matters for California,” at Santiago Canyon College in Orange County, California. “Despite its small size and long distance from us, Taiwan’s cultural and economic importance is felt across our communities,” Kim said during her opening remarks. Stanford University researcher and lecturer Lanhee Chen (陳仁宜), lawyer Lin Ching-chi
When Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) was wooing leaders from across Africa with a banquet on Wednesday night, King Mswati III of Eswatini was notably absent. That is because the kingdom — about the size of New Jersey and with just 1.2 million people — is one of Taiwan’s remaining dozen diplomatic allies. That means Eswatini does not participate in Xi’s Forum on China-Africa Cooperation, the centerpiece of China’s diplomatic outreach to Africa, which was held in Beijing this week. The landlocked nation, which sits between Mozambique and South Africa, is the last holdout in Beijing’s seven-plus decade mission to make Africa
RSS