Invoking the bus crash in Tainan County that took 22 lives, Premier Su Tseng-chang (
"When I say we should be `flexible,' I mean we should create or amend the law with more flexibility but enforce it strictly, according to real needs and the real situation. I am not encouraging everybody to be flexible about traffic violations," Su said.
The premier made his remarks during a weekly Cabinet meeting yesterday morning. Su started by discussing the "four-scale road maintenance levels" mechanism that is regarded as one of the causes of the tragedy.
The mechanism divides the country's roads into "national-level freeways," "provincial-level highways," "county-level boulevards" and "township-level roads."
The bus crash took place on a "township-level road," and some claim that the poor maintenance of the road and the lack of safety facilities at the scene contributed to the accident.
The premier suggested suspending the "four-scale road maintenance levels" mechanism.
"We cannot stubbornly persist with an old mechanism like this. I mean, it is not necessary, is it?" Su asked.
"The roads belong to the public. It is the government's responsibility to maintain the roads and keep them in good shape. It does not matter whether the roads belong to the central government or local governments," Su said.
As for the tour bus itself, the premier asked the Ministry of Transportation and Communications to amend the regulations appropriately and then strictly enforce them.
The ministry's latest statistics show that 90 percent of the tour buses on the nation's roads are "face-lifted."
A "face-lifted" bus has a chassis and engine provided by the vehicle's manufacturer and a frame, body and interior sourced from a local bodyshop. Most tour bus companies purchase "face-lifted" buses because they are cheaper to customize.
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