The water quality at hot spring sites in Taipei has improved slightly, according to the results of the latest round of inspections, and only one site was fined for failing to improve its water quality, the Taipei Department of Health said yesterday.
The department conducts monthly inspections between October and February every year of the 56 hot springs registered with the city government, as cooler temperatures prompt more people to visit hot springs facilities and resorts.
A total of 297 random inspections were conducted last month and 464 samples collected for testing, department officials said.
The test results showed 29 samples (6.2 percent) fell below allowable standards — less than 100 colony-forming units per milliliter (CFU/ml) of total bacterial count and less than 6 CFU/ml of Escherichia coli bacteria, Disease Control and Prevention Director Chen Shao-ching (陳少卿) said.
The failure rate was a slight improvement over the results of the tests conducted in October last year, when 9.33 percent of the samples were below standards, the department said.
Huang Ding Hot Spring Resort in Beitou District (北投) was the only site to fail the initial round as well as a follow-up test, and so it was fined, Chen said.
The resort’s water was found to have total bacterial count 2.3 times permissible limits, while its Escherichia coli count was 11 times over the limit, she said.
People should thoroughly wash before entering a hot springs bath, she said.
Taiwan is to receive the first batch of Lockheed Martin F-16 Block 70 jets from the US late this month, a defense official said yesterday, after a year-long delay due to a logjam in US arms deliveries. Completing the NT$247.2 billion (US$7.69 billion) arms deal for 66 jets would make Taiwan the third nation in the world to receive factory-fresh advanced fighter jets of the same make and model, following Bahrain and Slovakia, the official said on condition of anonymity. F-16 Block 70/72 are newly manufactured F-16 jets built by Lockheed Martin to the standards of the F-16V upgrade package. Republic of China
Taiwan-Japan Travel Passes are available for use on public transit networks in the two countries, Taoyuan Metro Corp said yesterday, adding that discounts of up to 7 percent are available. Taoyuan Metro, the Taipei MRT and Japan’s Keisei Electric Railway teamed up to develop the pass. Taoyuan Metro operates the Taiwan Taoyuan International Airport MRT Line, while Keisei Electric Railway offers express services between Tokyo’s Narita Airport, and the Keisei Ueno and Nippori stations in the Japanese capital, as well as between Narita and Haneda airports. The basic package comprises one one-way ticket on the Taoyuan MRT Line and one Skyliner ticket on
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
A pro-Russia hacker group has launched a distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attack on the Taiwanese government in retaliation for President William Lai’s (賴清德) comments suggesting that China should have a territorial dispute with Russia, an information security company said today. The hacker group, NoName057, recently launched an HTTPs flood attack called “DDoSia” targeting Taiwanese government and financial units, Radware told the Liberty Times (sister paper of the Taipei Times). Local tax bureaus in New Taipei City, Keelung, Hsinchu and Taoyuan were mentioned by the hackers. Only the Hsinchu Local Tax Bureau site appeared to be down earlier in the day, but was back
RSS