■ Transportation
Taichung celebrates airport
A caravan of cars and horses decorated with colorful flowers moved through the streets of downtown Taichung yesterday to mark the opening of the city's international airport. The parade was sponsored by the Cabinet's Central Coordination Office to celebrate the March 6 inauguration of Chingchuankang International Airport. Office director and former Taichung County chief Liao Yung-lai (廖永來) hailed the charter flights that will depart the new facility on March 6, saying that they mark the very first step for the airport that will serve the 6 million people living in central Taiwan. Taichung Chamber of Commerce chairman Lai Cheng-i (賴正鎰) said he is optimistic about the business prospects for Chingchuankang airport.
■ Defense
US expert warns about China
A US defense academic said in Taipei yesterday that he has learned that the Chinese military has been pondering a sweeping attack on Taiwan. Andrew Scobell, an associate research professor at the Strategic Studies Institute of the US Army War College, said at an international symposium on Taiwan's national defense that while he had considered a conventional and sweeping invasion of Taiwan by Chinese forces impossible in the past, he has since the beginning of this year not excluded the possibility of Beijing taking this option. Scobell, author of China's Use of Military Force: Beyond the Great Wall and the Long March, said that he is positive that the People's Liberation Army has been considering, planning and exercising this attack scenario. Scobell suggested that Taiwan beef up its counter-attack capabilities by strengthening its air and sea combat tactics and giving top priority to upgrading its anti-submarine and anti-torpedo capabilities. Strategically, he said, the best way to smash a PLA attempt to invade Taiwan is to demonstrate strength and determination without being provocative.
■ Obituary
Former Fu Jen president dies
A former president of Fu Jen Catholic University, Archbishop Stanislaus Lokuang (羅光), died of multiple organ failure at the age of 92 on Saturday at the Veterans General Hospital in Taipei, university officials said yesterday. Lokuang was admitted to the hospital three years ago for treatment of respiratory disease, his doctors said, adding that he then suffered from high blood pressure, arrhythmia, nephralgia and various other complications. Lokuang succeeded the late Cardinal Yu Pin as president of Fu Jen in 1978 and resigned due to poor health in 1992, when he was conferred the honorary title of rector emeritus of the university.
■ Tourism
Election slows bookings
The presidential election has sent a chill through travel agencies, as demand for package tours departing the country before March 20, is extremely low, business sources said yesterday. To encourage travelers to holiday abroad in the runup to the election, tourism agencies are offering reduced prices to lure customers, the sources said, adding that the election is having a major impact on their business. Pointing to the last presidential election as an example, they said bookings for outbound travel before noon on March 20 were only half full, pushing tourist agencies to lower their prices by two-thirds to cope with the situation. Groups that left after noon on March 20 four years ago were also offered lower prices, they noted.
A group of Taiwanese-American and Tibetan-American students at Harvard University on Saturday disrupted Chinese Ambassador to the US Xie Feng’s (謝鋒) speech at the school, accusing him of being responsible for numerous human rights violations. Four students — two Taiwanese Americans and two from Tibet — held up banners inside a conference hall where Xie was delivering a speech at the opening ceremony of the Harvard Kennedy School China Conference 2024. In a video clip provided by the Coalition of Students Resisting the CCP (Chinese Communist Party), Taiwanese-American Cosette Wu (吳亭樺) and Tibetan-American Tsering Yangchen are seen holding banners that together read:
UNAWARE: Many people sit for long hours every day and eat unhealthy foods, putting them at greater risk of developing one of the ‘three highs,’ an expert said More than 30 percent of adults aged 40 or older who underwent a government-funded health exam were unaware they had at least one of the “three highs” — high blood pressure, high blood lipids or high blood sugar, the Health Promotion Administration (HPA) said yesterday. Among adults aged 40 or older who said they did not have any of the “three highs” before taking the health exam, more than 30 percent were found to have at least one of them, Adult Preventive Health Examination Service data from 2022 showed. People with long-term medical conditions such as hypertension or diabetes usually do not
POLICE INVESTIGATING: A man said he quit his job as a nurse at Taipei Tzu Chi Hospital as he had been ‘disgusted’ by the behavior of his colleagues A man yesterday morning wrote online that he had witnessed nurses taking photographs and touching anesthetized patients inappropriately in Taipei Tzu Chi Hospital’s operating theaters. The man surnamed Huang (黃) wrote on the Professional Technology Temple bulletin board that during his six-month stint as a nurse at the hospital, he had seen nurses taking pictures of patients, including of their private parts, after they were anesthetized. Some nurses had also touched patients inappropriately and children were among those photographed, he said. Huang said this “disgusted” him “so much” that “he felt the need to reveal these unethical acts in the operating theater
Heat advisories were in effect for nine administrative regions yesterday afternoon as warm southwesterly winds pushed temperatures above 38°C in parts of southern Taiwan, the Central Weather Administration (CWA) said. As of 3:30pm yesterday, Tainan’s Yujing District (玉井) had recorded the day’s highest temperature of 39.7°C, though the measurement will not be included in Taiwan’s official heat records since Yujing is an automatic rather than manually operated weather station, the CWA said. Highs recorded in other areas were 38.7°C in Kaohsiung’s Neimen District (內門), 38.2°C in Chiayi City and 38.1°C in Pingtung’s Sandimen Township (三地門), CWA data showed. The spell of scorching