SOCEITY
Taipei flower show opens
Christmas is set to come to the Taipei Expo Park when the Taipei Flower Show opens on Saturday, the city’s Park and Street Lights Office announced yesterday. This year’s outdoor flower display will feature more than 100,000 pots of about 200 different varieties of flowers organized around Christmas themes, including snowmen, sleds and Christmas trees. Poinsettias will be the highlight of the show with more than 12 different varieties featured, including rare mixed color and double-flowering varieties in addition to the more common scarlet, pink and yellow. The show will run until Jan. 11 with craft activities and street artist performances on weekends.
TOURISM
Kaohsiung officials in China
Greater Kaohsiung government officials led a delegation earlier this week to visit their counterparts in China in an effort to boost maritime tourism on both sides of the Taiwan Strait by pushing for various concessions, including 72-hour visa-free transit for cruise ship passengers. The delegation is being led by Marine Bureau Director Lai Jui-lung(賴瑞隆), who is accompanied by officials of the Taiwan Yacht Industry Association, the Kaohsiung Tourism Industry Association and the Kaohsiung International Cruise Association. Lai said that with 17 of Taiwan’s 33 yacht manufacturing companies located in Greater Kaohsiung, the city has boundless growth potential in the maritime tourism industry that could be further improved by cross-strait collaboration.
SOCEITY
‘Heaviest man’ has surgery
A Greater Kaohsiung man was discharged from the city’s E-Da Hospital yesterday after recovering from gastric bypass surgery aimed at helping him lose weight. Dubbed “the heaviest man in Asia,” Lee Chih-cheng (李志成) weighed 261kg when he was admitted to hospital on Nov. 11. E-DA Hospital surgeons performed the procedure, which reduces the functional volume of the stomach and reroutes the small intestines to allow food to bypass part of the digestive system. Within a month of the surgery, Lee had lost 50kg and his weight had dropped to 211kg. However, on his discharge it still took 10 strong orderlies to lift him into the van that was taking him home. Lee’s doctors said they expect him to regain mobility and be able to walk unassisted when his weight falls to 150kg.
NATIONAL DEFENSE
Aerobatics team to be on TV
The air force’s Thunder Tiger Aerobatics Team is to be featured in a special produced by the National Geographic Channel aimed at revealing the stories behind the team members, including one who died in a recent crash. The single-episode special titled Taiwan Elite Warriors: Thunder Tigers is to be broadcast on Jan. 1, the channel said. After an English version of the program is made available, it is to be aired in other Asian countries. In the program, viewers are to get a glimpse at the hardships the team members have to endure as they practice various aerobatic maneuvers, including rolls and spins. Members on the Thunder Tiger Aerobatics Team make an appearance in the program, including Lieutenant Colonel Chuang Pei-yuan (莊倍源), an AT-3 trainer pilot who died in a training accident in October. Chuang’s aircraft collided with another AT-3 trainer during a routine aerobatic training mission on Oct. 21 in Greater Kaohsiung. The other pilot, Lieutenant Colonel Yang Chih-ping (楊志平), survived.
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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