■ TOURISM
Kaohsiung to increase links
Kaohsiung is expected to launch direct air links with the Chinese cities of Qingdao and Tianjin in the middle of this month, which will help boost tourism in southern Taiwan, a tourism industry representative said yesterday. Also, the number of flights between Kaohsiung and China will almost triple to 38 per week, said Lin Fu-nan (林富男), leader of an alliance of tourism-related businesses in the Kaohsiung and Pingtung areas. Lin said the increase in the number of flights was agreed upon during cross-Strait aviation talks last month in Taipei and is the result of lobbying efforts by the alliance. At present, Kaohsiung International Airport maintains direct air links with eight Chinese cities — Fuzhou, Shenzhen, Shanghai, Hangzhou, Ningbo, Guangzhou, Chengdu and Xiamen.
■ SOCIETY
Fireworks act revised
Parents who let children under the age of 12 play with fireworks unsupervised are now punishable under a recently revised law. The revised Firework and Firecracker Management Act (爆竹煙火管理條例) was implemented on Wednesday, changing fireworks categories and increasing punishments for violations, the National Fire Agency said. The agency said parents or guardians face fines of between NT$3,000 and NT$15,000 if their children are caught playing with fireworks without supervision. Previously, the law only required them to accompany their children while playing, and there was no punishment if they failed to do so. Selling fireworks to children remains illegal and violators can still be fined between NT$30,000 and NT$150,000 under the revised act.
■ HEALTH
Encephalitis claims life
A woman in Tainan City infected with Japanese encephalitis died on Wednesday, a senior health official said on Thursday. Centers for Disease Control Deputy Director Lin Ting (林頂) said the woman might have caught the disease at the pig farm where she worked in neighboring Tainan County. The disease’s carrier, Culex tritaeniorhynchus mosquitoes, were found at the farm after she was diagnosed. The woman began showing flu-like symptoms on May 18 and went to several clinics over the following days. However, she was not diagnosed with Japanese encephalitis until she was taken to National Cheng Kung University Hospital as her condition worsened, Lin said, adding that the local government cleaned and sprayed pesticide in the area and urged the public to take action against mosquitoes to prevent disease transmission.
■ AGRICULTURE
Pingtung going bananas
Pingtung County Government has begun to buy bananas from local farmers at eight locations to help prop up the fruit’s slumping price, in line with an initiative launched by the Council of Agriculture (COA). The COA announced late last month that it would guide food processors to buy bananas for NT$5 per kilogram to boost flagging demand. Pingtung officials said yesterday that they had begun to comply. According to the county’s Agricultural Department, demand for bananas has been crowded out by the harvests of many other summer fruits like mangoes, pineapples and watermelons, causing prices to fall. “Bananas have been unable to compete with the juicy fruits,” the department said. The COA set a goal of purchasing 3,000 tonnes of healthy green bananas weighing under 6kg per bundle.
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