■ Society
Suicide rocks DPP family
Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) Legislator Lan Mei-chin's (藍美津) youngest child, 29-year old Huang Hsin-yi (黃心儀), hung herself on Wednesday. Huang lived in a condominium next door to her parents with her older brother and his wife. Her suicide has raised specula-tion about whether Lan will continue to campaign for the December elections. Lan and her husband Huang Tien-fu (黃天福) have not commented on their daughter's death but their younger son, Taipei City Councilor Lan Shih-tsung (藍世聰), held a press conference to express the family's grief. Huang had been on medication for depression but the family said her condition was stable and there was no hint that she was thinking of suicide.
■ Weather
CWB monitors Nock-Ten
The Central Weather Bureau is monitoring Typhoon
Nock-Ten, bureau sources reported yesterday. Nock-Ten was centered some 1,900km southeast of Taiwan at 10am yesterday, moving northwesterly toward the island at a speed of 21kph. With a radius of 200km, the typhoon was packing maximum sustained winds of up to 180km per hour, meteorologists said. The forecasters don't know yet whether Nock-Ten will directly hit the country, but they expect it to bring tremendous amounts of rainfall in the following days regardless.
■ Health
US beef ban to be lifted
Ten months after banning
US beef imports to prevent mad cow disease from entering the country, health officials yesterday said they intend to lift the ban, pos-sibly by year's-end. After a cow tested positive for the disease in Washington state last December, the govern-ment placed a seven-year ban on US beef imports. After reviewing reports from the US Department of Agriculture, the Department of Health's 18-member committee confirmed that the
US has mad cow disease under control. Bureau of Food Safety Director Chen Lu-hung (陳陸宏) said the department will send officials to the US to verify their findings. If no further health risks are found, the department said it will lift the ban at the end of this year.
■ Society
New bike path to be built
The Taichung County Government announced yesterday that it will build a new route that will be the first in Asia to take advan-tage of an abandoned train tunnel. County Commissioner Huang Chung-sheng (黃仲生) said work on the path will begin next month and is expected to be finished early next year. He said that the project will give his county its third bike-only trail built along abandoned railroad tracks. The new route will start from the horse stables in Houli Township, enter the 1,269m No. 9 tunnel on the old Western Railway Line, pass over the 382m Hualiang Steel Bridge on Tachia River and end where the Tungfeng Green Corridor bike route begins.
■ Cross-strait Ties
No reward for Chinese police
The Criminal Investigation Bureau yesterday denied reports that Chinese police have received a share of NT$8 million in the NT$20 million bounty for the arrest of fugitives Hsueh Chiu (薜球) and Chen Yi-hua (陳益華). "The report was all wrong," a bureau official said, adding that no Chinese police applied for the bounty after Hsueh and Chen were repatriated on Sept. 23. He said it was a Taiwanese informant who gave the tip.
An undersea cable to Penghu County has been severed, the Ministry of Digital Affairs said today, with a Chinese-funded ship suspected of being responsible. It comes just a month after a Chinese ship was suspected of severing an undersea cable north of Keelung Harbor. The National Communications and Cyber Security Center received a report at 3:03am today from Chunghwa Telecom that the No. 3 cable from Taiwan to Penghu was severed 14.7km off the coast of Tainan, the Ministry of Digital Affairs said. The Coast Guard Administration (CGA) upon receiving a report from Chunghwa Telecom began to monitor the Togolese-flagged Hong Tai (宏泰)
A cat named Mikan (蜜柑) has brought in revenue of more than NT$10 million (US$305,390) for the Kaohsiung MRT last year. Mikan, born on April 4, 2020, was a stray cat before being adopted by personnel of Kaohsiung MRT’s Ciaotou Sugar Refinery Station. Mikan was named after a Japanese term for mandarin orange due to his color and because he looks like an orange when curled up. He was named “station master” of Ciaotou Sugar Refinery Station in September 2020, and has since become famous. With Kaohsiung MRT’s branding, along with the release of a set of cultural and creative products, station master Mikan
RISING TOURISM: A survey showed that tourist visits increased by 35 percent last year, while newly created attractions contributed almost half of the growth Changhua County’s Lukang Old Street (鹿港老街) and its surrounding historical area clinched first place among Taiwan’s most successful tourist attractions last year, while no location in eastern Taiwan achieved a spot in the top 20 list, the Tourism Administration said. The listing was created by the Tourism Administration’s Forward-looking Tourism Policy Research office. Last year, the Lukang Old Street and its surrounding area had 17.3 million visitors, more than the 16 million visitors for the Wenhua Road Night Market (文化路夜市) in Chiayi City and 14.5 million visitors at Tainan’s Anping (安平) historical area, it said. The Taipei 101 skyscraper and its environs —
Taiwan on Friday said a New Zealand hamburger restaurant has apologized for a racist remark to a Taiwanese customer after reports that it had first apologized to China sparked outrage in Taiwan. An image posted on Threads by a Taiwanese who ate at Fergburger in Queenstown showed that their receipt dated Sunday last week included the words “Ching Chang,” a racial slur. The Chinese Consulate-General in Christchurch in a statement on Thursday said it had received and accepted an apology from the restaurant over the incident. The comment triggered an online furor among Taiwanese who saw it as an insult to the
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