The Taipei County Government will spend NT$770 million (US$23.94 million) before the end of next year to improve the county’s cycle path network to encourage people to commute by bicycle, Taipei County Commissioner Chou Hsi-wei (周錫瑋) said yesterday.
Chou made the announcement at the Bitan Scenic Park while hosting a ceremony to launch activities to mark International Car Free Day, which promotes a pollution-free living environment.
Chou urged people to drive less and cycle more to save energy, while pledging to build a low-carbon city with a cycle trail network that would eventually stretch for 128km.
PHOTO: CHANG CHUNG-YI, TAIPEI TIMES
The day’s activities featured a green market at the Bitan park, with booths displaying green energy and technologies.
In Kaohsiung City, Mayor Chen Chu (陳菊) joined thousands of residents to mark Car Free Day.
In a speech, Chen said that although Kaohsiung is an industrial city, its residents can be proud of the fact that it will have more than 150km of bicycle paths by the end of the year.
Through the government’s promotional efforts, the number of cyclists in Kaohsiung had risen significantly in recent years, Chu said.
To mark Car Free Day, the city government launched a new policy whereby people carrying folding bicycles on city buses would no longer be charged an extra fee.
Thirty-five earthquakes have exceeded 5.5 on the Richter scale so far this year, the most in 14 years, the Central Weather Administration (CWA) said on Facebook on Thursday. A large earthquake in Hualien County on April 3 released five times as much the energy as the 921 Earthquake on Sept. 21, 1999, the agency said in its latest earthquake report for this year. Hualien County has had the most national earthquake alerts so far this year at 64, with Yilan County second with 23 and Changhua County third with nine, the agency said. The April 3 earthquake was what caused the increase in
Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) is unlikely to attempt an invasion of Taiwan during US president-elect Donald Trump’s time in office, Taiwanese and foreign academics said on Friday. Trump is set to begin his second term early next year. Xi’s ambition to establish China as a “true world power” has intensified over the years, but he would not initiate an invasion of Taiwan “in the near future,” as his top priority is to maintain the regime and his power, not unification, Tokyo Woman’s Christian University distinguished visiting professor and contemporary Chinese politics expert Akio Takahara said. Takahara made the comment at a
DEFENSE: This month’s shipment of 38 modern M1A2T tanks would begin to replace the US-made M60A3 and indigenous CM11 tanks, whose designs date to the 1980s The M1A2T tanks that Taiwan expects to take delivery of later this month are to spark a “qualitative leap” in the operational capabilities of the nation’s armored forces, a retired general told the Liberty Times (sister paper of the Taipei Times) in an interview published yesterday. On Tuesday, the army in a statement said it anticipates receiving the first batch of 38 M1A2T Abrams main battle tanks from the US, out of 108 tanks ordered, in the coming weeks. The M1 Abrams main battle tank is a generation ahead of the Taiwanese army’s US-made M60A3 and indigenously developed CM11 tanks, which have
CASE COUNT: The deceased had advised law enforcement agencies regarding 60 fraud cases this year, leading to the confiscation of NT$9.3 billion in alleged illegal proceeds Prosecutors yesterday launched an investigation into the death of cryptocurrency expert Miffy Chen (陳梅慧), who died in a car crash on Wednesday under what some consider to be suspicious circumstances following her work with law enforcement to track down NT$9.3 billion (US$286.97 million) in alleged illegal proceeds. Prosecutor-General Hsing Tai-chao (邢泰釗) tasked the Hsinchu District Prosecutors’ Office with investigating the incident following requests from the Criminal Investigation Bureau (CIB) and other agencies with which she worked to crack several prominent cases involving financial fraud and money laundering. Chen was killed in a six-car pileup near Hsinchu in the northbound lanes of Sun
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