SOCIETY
Elevator safety to be tested
New Taipei City Mayor Hou You-yi (侯友宜) yesterday said that he would order a third-party review of two incidents last week in which city government-operated elevators malfunctioned after undergoing maintenance. The first of the incidents occurred on Tuesday last week, when the cable of an elevator at the New Taipei City Funeral Parlor snapped, causing it to drop from the building’s second floor, injuring three workers inside. The second incident occurred on Sunday when a pedestrian overpass elevator near New Taipei City Hall Square malfunctioned and fell from the second floor. A woman in the elevator broke her foot, while her eight-year-old nephew was treated for lacerations. Hou said safety inspections would be conducted on all elevators operated by the city government within the next two months. The city government would also cover the medical expenses of those hurt in the accidents and help them seek financial compensation once legal responsibility for the failures has been determined, he added.
MILITARY
Air drills postponed
The air force’s annual Tien Lung, or “Sky Dragon,” aerial exercises that were originally scheduled to begin yesterday and last five days have been postponed to next month due to poor weather conditions. The drills aimed at testing pilots’ air-to-air, air-to-sea and air-to-ground combat skills in the air force’s backbone fighters — F-16Vs, Mirage 2000-5s and Indigenous Defense Fighters — are rescheduled to Monday next week to Friday, a military source said.
CRIME
Taichung driver detained
The Taichung District Court yesterday approved the detention of an 18-year-old unlicensed driver who police suspect was driving under the influence of drugs in an alleged hit-and-run incident on Sunday morning that left one person dead. The Taichung Fire Bureau said it received a call at 9:05am reporting that somebody had been struck by a vehicle in the city’s Beitun District (北屯). Emergency personnel arrived at the scene to find a male, aged about 60, in a state of cardiac arrest. Efforts to save him failed and he was later pronounced dead at a hospital. The driver allegedly fled the scene of the incident and was arrested about 15 minutes later after he crashed his car into a power distribution box, police said. The driver, surnamed Pai (白), told the police he was not aware that he had hit a man. He did not have a driver’s license, but was driving a BMW sedan which he said had been rented by a family member, the police said. Pai initially passed a breath alcohol test, but during questioning admitted to taking ketamine the day before, the police said.
FOOD SAFETY
Mushrooms to be destroyed
A batch of mushrooms imported from China was among foods that were recently ordered to be destroyed for containing excessive levels of heavy metal, the Food and Drug Administration said yesterday. The imported mushroom samples were among 224 products picked for testing across Taiwan from July to last month and were found to contain an average of 7mg of cadmium per kilogram, more than the threshold of 2mg per kilogram. The agency said the mushroom sample collected was sold at local hot pot chain Top One Pot’s Tainan branch, which was instructed to remove the product from its menu. The mushrooms from the same batch were ordered to be destroyed, it said.
A magnitude 6.4 earthquake struck off the coast of Hualien County in eastern Taiwan at 7pm yesterday, the Central Weather Administration (CWA) said. The epicenter of the temblor was at sea, about 69.9km south of Hualien County Hall, at a depth of 30.9km, it said. There were no immediate reports of damage resulting from the quake. The earthquake’s intensity, which gauges the actual effect of a temblor, was highest in Taitung County’s Changbin Township (長濱), where it measured 5 on Taiwan’s seven-tier intensity scale. The quake also measured an intensity of 4 in Hualien, Nantou, Chiayi, Yunlin, Changhua and Miaoli counties, as well as
Credit departments of farmers’ and fishers’ associations blocked a total of more than NT$180 million (US$6.01 million) from being lost to scams last year, National Police Agency (NPA) data showed. The Agricultural Finance Agency (AFA) said last week that staff of farmers’ and fishers’ associations’ credit departments are required to implement fraud prevention measures when they serve clients at the counter. They would ask clients about personal financial management activities whenever they suspect there might be a fraud situation, and would immediately report the incident to local authorities, which would send police officers to the site to help, it said. NPA data showed
ENERGY RESILIENCE: Although Alaska is open for investments, Taiwan is sourcing its gas from the Middle East, and the sea routes carry risks, Ho Cheng-hui said US government officials’ high-profile reception of a Taiwanese representative at the Alaska Sustainable Energy Conference indicated the emergence of an Indo-Pacific energy resilience alliance, an academic said. Presidential Office Secretary-General Pan Men-an (潘孟安) attended the conference in Alaska on Thursday last week at the invitation of the US government. Pan visited oil and gas facilities with senior US officials, including US Secretary of the Interior Doug Burgum, US Secretary of Energy Chris Wright, Alaska Governor Mike Dunleavy and US Senator Daniel Sullivan. Pan attending the conference on behalf of President William Lai (賴清德) shows a significant elevation in diplomatic representation,
The Taipei City Reserve Command yesterday initiated its first-ever 14-day recall of some of the city’s civilian service reservists, who are to undergo additional training on top of refresher courses. The command said that it rented sites in Neihu District (內湖), including the Taipei Tennis Center, for the duration of the camp to optimize tactical positioning and accommodate the size of the battalion of reservists. A battalion is made up of four companies of more than 200 reservists each, it said. Aside from shooting drills at a range in New Taipei City’s Linkou District (林口), the remainder of the training would be at
RSS