■ Transportation
THSRC tickets in focus
Bureau of High Speed Rail Director-General Pang Chia-hua (龐家驊) said yesterday the bureau was authorized to regularly examine the performance of ticket sales at high speed rail stations. "This is a build-operate-transfer [BOT] project," Pang said, "and the government is obligated to oversee the financial situation of the Taiwan High Speed Rail Corp [THSRC] through both the company's quarterly reports and inspections." Pang said that the bureau would examine the company's performance next month and determine whether the ticketing system had improved. Meanwhile, Pang confirmed yesterday that the THSRC had not submitted an application for another inspection on the Taipei-Banciao section, in which the inspectors will personally review six major problems they had identified earlier and determine whether they have been addressed.
■ Society
Eden Foundation sells art
The Eden Social Welfare Foundation held an "Eden Day" yesterday, to enhance the well-being of mentally challenged individuals, saying that said "Eden Days" would now be held regularly. In June, Eden opened a small cafe in Taipei funded by a private enterprise. The cafe provides stable jobs for mentally challenged persons, the foundation said. At yesterday's Eden Day, local artist Liu Hsing-chin (劉興欽) donated 10 of his works for auction to raise funds for Eden. "We hope to hold an Eden Day event every two months to encourage businesses to share their resources with us," said Carol Lu (呂惠萱), the charity's public relations director. The goal of the days is to give businesses and individuals a chance to contribute to the charity's work.
■ Politics
KMT shows faith in Ma
Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) Secretary-General Wu Den-yih (吳敦義) said yesterday that the party believed KMT chairman Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九) would be found innocent in the "mayoral special fund" case currently being investigated by prosecutors. "Ma has been a man of integrity and has run the Taipei City Government in accordance with laws and regulations. The public should be sure of his innocence," Wu said. Meanwhile, KMT Legislator Alex Tsai (蔡正元) suggested that the party enact a regulation to ensure Ma could run in next year's presidential election. Ma was accused of pocketing half of his mayoral "special allowance fund" during his eight years as Taipei mayor from 1998 to last year. KMT regulations state that party members are barred from running in the party's primary election if indicted on charges of corruption.
■ Agriculture
Orchid DNA sequenced
Taiwanese agricultural researchers have completed the DNA sequencing of 56 out of 60 non-hybrid butterfly orchid species worldwide, Council of Agriculture officials said yesterday. The council's Kaohsiung District Agricultural Research and Extension Station has spent three years and some NT$2 million (USD$60,500) on the project. The findings have been published by the science journal Plant Systematics and Evolution and the DNA datasets have also been added to the database at the US National Institute of Health. An associate research fellow at the station explained that each butterfly orchid carries a unique DNA sequence and that even after several generations of hybridization, the extraction of the "descendants" can still be recognized by its genetic expressions. Researchers can use the information to identify an orchid and where it comes from, he added.
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