Although cigarette sales were reduced by 13 percent last year, some indoor establishments, particularly Internet cafes, still need to improve their anti-smoking efforts, an anti-smoking group said yesterday.
Yau Sea-wain (姚思遠), president of the John Tung Foundation, said that while the problem of secondhand smoke had been curtailed since a smoking ban targeting indoor public spaces and workplaces took effect in January 2008, the foundation still reported 1,043 violations of the ban over the past year.
Of those violations, cases involving Internet cafes topped all other indoor establishments or workplaces, Yau said.
You Po-tsun (游伯村), a Bureau of Health Promotion official in charge of public health education, said a survey based on 650,000 visits by local health bureaus to indoor public areas over the past year had confirmed a decline in both smoking and secondhand smoke.
The survey found secondhand smoke in public transportation facilities and indoor establishments, including roofed transportation stations, KTVs, Internet cafes and comic-book stores, had dropped 50 percent, while household secondhand smoke fell by more than 20 percent.
Citing a Bureau of Health Promotion estimate, You said 1.18 billion packs of cigarettes were sold in Taiwan last year, down 13 percent from 1.36 billion in 2008.
Major violations of the public smoking ban over the past year included a Kaohsiung company selling cigarette packs containing promotional picture cards, which drew a fine of NT$5.2 million, and a person in Tainan selling cigarettes online, which drew a fine of NT$8 million.
A Taipei night club was fined NT$5 million for promoting cigarettes on its premises, the Bureau of Health Promotion said.
There are 77 incidents of Taiwanese travelers going missing in China between January last year and last month, the Straits Exchange Foundation (SEF) said. More than 40 remain unreachable, SEF Secretary-General Luo Wen-jia (羅文嘉) said on Friday. Most of the reachable people in the more than 30 other incidents were allegedly involved in fraud, while some had disappeared for personal reasons, Luo said. One of these people is Kuo Yu-hsuan (郭宇軒), a 22-year-old Taiwanese man from Kaohsiung who went missing while visiting China in August. China’s Taiwan Affairs Office last month said in a news statement that he was under investigation
An aviation jacket patch showing a Formosan black bear punching Winnie the Pooh has become popular overseas, including at an aviation festival held by the Japan Air Self-Defense Force at the Ashiya Airbase yesterday. The patch was designed last year by Taiwanese designer Hsu Fu-yu (徐福佑), who said that it was inspired by Taiwan’s countermeasures against frequent Chinese military aircraft incursions. The badge shows a Formosan black bear holding a Republic of China flag as it punches Winnie the Pooh — a reference to Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) — who is dressed in red and is holding a honey pot with
Celebrations marking Double Ten National Day are to begin in Taipei today before culminating in a fireworks display in Yunlin County on the night of Thursday next week. To start the celebrations, a concert is to be held at the Taipei Dome at 4pm today, featuring a lineup of award-winning singers, including Jody Chiang (江蕙), Samingad (紀曉君) and Huang Fei (黃妃), Taipei tourism bureau official Chueh Yu-ling (闕玉玲) told a news conference yesterday. School choirs, including the Pqwasan na Taoshan Choir and Hngzyang na Matui & Nahuy Children’s Choir, and the Ministry of National Defense Symphony Orchestra, flag presentation unit and choirs,
China is attempting to subsume Taiwanese culture under Chinese culture by promulgating legislation on preserving documents on ties between the Minnan region and Taiwan, a Taiwanese academic said yesterday. China on Tuesday enforced the Fujian Province Minnan and Taiwan Document Protection Act to counter Taiwanese cultural independence with historical evidence that would root out misleading claims, Chinese-language media outlet Straits Today reported yesterday. The act is “China’s first ad hoc local regulations in the cultural field that involve Taiwan and is a concrete step toward implementing the integrated development demonstration zone,” Fujian Provincial Archives deputy director Ma Jun-fan (馬俊凡) said. The documents