SOCIETY
Elevator safety to be tested
New Taipei City Mayor Hou You-yi (侯友宜) yesterday said that he would order a third-party review of two incidents last week in which city government-operated elevators malfunctioned after undergoing maintenance. The first of the incidents occurred on Tuesday last week, when the cable of an elevator at the New Taipei City Funeral Parlor snapped, causing it to drop from the building’s second floor, injuring three workers inside. The second incident occurred on Sunday when a pedestrian overpass elevator near New Taipei City Hall Square malfunctioned and fell from the second floor. A woman in the elevator broke her foot, while her eight-year-old nephew was treated for lacerations. Hou said safety inspections would be conducted on all elevators operated by the city government within the next two months. The city government would also cover the medical expenses of those hurt in the accidents and help them seek financial compensation once legal responsibility for the failures has been determined, he added.
MILITARY
Air drills postponed
The air force’s annual Tien Lung, or “Sky Dragon,” aerial exercises that were originally scheduled to begin yesterday and last five days have been postponed to next month due to poor weather conditions. The drills aimed at testing pilots’ air-to-air, air-to-sea and air-to-ground combat skills in the air force’s backbone fighters — F-16Vs, Mirage 2000-5s and Indigenous Defense Fighters — are rescheduled to Monday next week to Friday, a military source said.
CRIME
Taichung driver detained
The Taichung District Court yesterday approved the detention of an 18-year-old unlicensed driver who police suspect was driving under the influence of drugs in an alleged hit-and-run incident on Sunday morning that left one person dead. The Taichung Fire Bureau said it received a call at 9:05am reporting that somebody had been struck by a vehicle in the city’s Beitun District (北屯). Emergency personnel arrived at the scene to find a male, aged about 60, in a state of cardiac arrest. Efforts to save him failed and he was later pronounced dead at a hospital. The driver allegedly fled the scene of the incident and was arrested about 15 minutes later after he crashed his car into a power distribution box, police said. The driver, surnamed Pai (白), told the police he was not aware that he had hit a man. He did not have a driver’s license, but was driving a BMW sedan which he said had been rented by a family member, the police said. Pai initially passed a breath alcohol test, but during questioning admitted to taking ketamine the day before, the police said.
FOOD SAFETY
Mushrooms to be destroyed
A batch of mushrooms imported from China was among foods that were recently ordered to be destroyed for containing excessive levels of heavy metal, the Food and Drug Administration said yesterday. The imported mushroom samples were among 224 products picked for testing across Taiwan from July to last month and were found to contain an average of 7mg of cadmium per kilogram, more than the threshold of 2mg per kilogram. The agency said the mushroom sample collected was sold at local hot pot chain Top One Pot’s Tainan branch, which was instructed to remove the product from its menu. The mushrooms from the same batch were ordered to be destroyed, it said.
The Mainland Affairs Council (MAC) yesterday said it is fully aware of the situation following reports that the son of ousted Chinese politician Bo Xilai (薄熙來) has arrived in Taiwan and is to marry a Taiwanese. Local media reported that Bo Guagua (薄瓜瓜), son of the former member of the Political Bureau of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of China, is to marry the granddaughter of Luodong Poh-Ai Hospital founder Hsu Wen-cheng (許文政). The pair met when studying abroad and arranged to get married this year, with the wedding breakfast to be held at The One holiday resort in Hsinchu
The Taipei Zoo on Saturday said it would pursue legal action against a man who was filmed climbing over a railing to tease and feed spotted hyenas in their enclosure earlier that day. In videos uploaded to social media on Saturday, a man can be seen climbing over a protective railing and approaching a ledge above the zoo’s spotted hyena enclosure, before dropping unidentified objects down to two of the animals. The Taipei Zoo in a statement said the man’s actions were “extremely inappropriate and even illegal.” In addition to monitoring the hyenas’ health, the zoo would collect evidence provided by the public
‘SIGN OF DANGER’: Beijing has never directly named Taiwanese leaders before, so China is saying that its actions are aimed at the DPP, a foundation official said National Security Bureau (NSB) Director-General Tsai Ming-yen (蔡明彥) yesterday accused Beijing of spreading propaganda, saying that Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) had singled out President William Lai (賴清德) in his meeting with US President Joe Biden when talking about those whose “true nature” seek Taiwanese independence. The Biden-Xi meeting took place on the sidelines of the APEC summit in Peru on Saturday. “If the US cares about maintaining peace across the Taiwan Strait, it is crucial that it sees clearly the true nature of Lai and the ruling Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) in seeking Taiwanese independence, handles the Taiwan question with extra
A road safety advocacy group yesterday called for reforms to the driver licensing and retraining system after a pedestrian was killed and 15 other people were injured in a two-bus collision in Taipei. “Taiwan’s driver’s licenses are among the easiest to obtain in the world, and there is no mandatory retraining system for drivers,” Taiwan Vision Zero Alliance, a group pushing to reduce pedestrian fatalities, said in a news release. Under the regulations, people who have held a standard car driver’s license for two years and have completed a driver training course are eligible to take a test
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