■ POLITICS
More women voted: CEC
More women than men voted in last month’s presidential election, the Central Election Commission (CEC) said yesterday. CEC figures showed that only 6,504,575 out of a total of 8,670,480 eligible male voters cast their ballots — a turnout of 75.02 percent. The figure was slightly lower than the number of females who voted, which was 77.65 percent. A total of 6,717,276 out of 8,651,142 eligible female voters went to the polls.
■ CRIME
Man arrested in Manila
A Taiwanese man suspected of involvement in drug trafficking and credit card fraud was arrested in the Philippine capital, a police spokesman said yesterday. Senior Superintendent Nicanor Bartolome said Yang Chih-chien was arrested on Sunday during a raid on his house in a posh subdivision in the Manila suburban city of Paranaque. Bartolome said the raiding team recovered 70kg of ketamine, a prohibited drug, with a street value of 350 million pesos (US$8.43 million). Police also recovered equipment and supplies used in the duplication and manufacture of fake credit cards and passports. Bartolome said the suspect was also facing various criminal charges in Manila and the central city of Cebu, but had posted bail.
■ FOOD
Milk passes residue test
Milk reported to have been tainted by antibiotics has passed drug residue tests, a Council of Agriculture (COA) official said yesterday. Huang Ying-hao (黃英豪), director of the council’s Department of Animal Industry, said health and agricultural authorities collected samples of the raw and processed milk in question for tests and the results “were either negative or showed no drug residue.” The allegedly tainted milk was sold under two fresh milk brands — Highland and General Milk (將軍牛乳) — which are both marketed by leading food manufacturer AGV Products Corp (愛之味). The milk was processed by an AGV-contracted dairy processing plant in Miaoli County. The Chinese-language Apple Daily reported on April 16 that one of the plant’s suppliers in Yunlin County supplied milk from diseased cows that was purchased at low prices from neighboring dairy farms. The revelation prompted AGV to recall the two brand and led health and agricultural authorities to launch an investigation.
■ SOCIETY
Students injured in accident
Fifteen students from National Taishan Senior High School were injured early yesterday when the bus carrying them to school crashed into a truck on the Dahan Bridge linking Banciao and Sinjhuang. Firemen and other emergency workers sent the 15 students, including four girls, to three hospitals for treatment. Most of the students suffered lacerations to the face, chest and knees. Several of them required stitches. Police said that a city bus owned by Sanchung Bus Co was carrying more than 30 students from Banciao City to their school, Taishan Senior High School in Taishan Township (泰山), when the accident occurred. Kung Chun-min (龔俊銘), the 38-year-old bus driver, said that as he drove onto the bridge, he saw that the roadway was covered with a film of grease. “I was driving at 40kph when I noticed that the truck ahead of me had stopped. I started to brake from 100m away, but could not stop the bus,” he said. Chiu Ching-han (邱清含), 33, the driver of the truck, said he also noticed the grease and had stopped the truck in order to caution traffic policemen on the other side of the road.
Foreign tourists who purchase a seven-day Taiwan Pass are to get a second one free of charge as part of a government bid to boost tourism, the Tourism Administration said yesterday. A pair of Taiwan Passes is priced at NT$5,000 (US$156.44), an agency staff member said, adding that the passes can be used separately. The pass can be used in many of Taiwan’s major cities and to travel to several tourist resorts. It expires seven days after it is first used. The pass is a three-in-one package covering the high-speed rail system, mass rapid transport (MRT) services and the Taiwan Tourist Shuttle services,
Drinking a lot of water or milk would not help a person who has ingested terbufos, a toxic chemical that has been identified as the likely cause of three deaths, a health expert said yesterday. An 83-year-old woman surnamed Tseng (曾) and two others died this week after eating millet dumplings with snails that Tseng had made. Tseng died on Tuesday and others ate the leftovers when they went to her home to mourn her death that evening. Twelve people became ill after eating the dumplings following Tseng’s death. Their symptoms included vomiting and convulsions. Six were hospitalized, with two of them
DIVA-READY: The city’s deadline for the repairs is one day before pop star Jody Chiang is to perform at the Taipei Dome for the city’s Double Ten National Day celebrations The Taipei City Government has asked Farglory Group (遠雄集團) to repair serious water leaks in the Taipei Dome before Friday next week, Taipei Mayor Chiang Wan-an (蔣萬安) said yesterday, following complaints that many areas at the stadium were leaking during two baseball games over the weekend. The dome on Saturday and Sunday hosted two games in tribute to CTBC Brothers’ star Chou Szu-chi (周思齊) ahead of his retirement from the CPBL. The games each attracted about 40,000 people, filling the stadium to capacity. However, amid heavy rain, many people reported water leaking on some seats, at the entrance and exit areas, and the
BIG collection: The herbarium holds more than 560,000 specimens, from the Japanese colonial period to the present, including the Wulai azalea, which is now extinct in the wild The largest collection of plant specimens in Taiwan, the Taipei Botanical Garden’s herbarium, is celebrating its 100th anniversary with an exhibition that opened on Friday. The herbarium provides critical historical documents for botanists and is the first of its kind in Taiwan, Taiwan Forestry Research Institute director Tseng Yen-hsueh (曾彥學) said. It is housed in a two-story red brick building, which opened during 1924. At the time, it stored 30,000 plant specimens from almost 6,000 species, including Taiwanese plant samples collected by Tomitaro Makino, the “father of Japanese botany,” Tseng said. The herbarium collection has grown in the century since its