■ TRANSPORT
Tickets to go on sale
Starting tomorrow, the Taiwan Railway Administration (TRA) and Taiwan High Speed Rail Corp (THSRC), as well as airlines operating flights to Kinmen, Penghu and Matsu, will allow the public to start reserving tickets for the Lunar New Year holidays. Passengers traveling to the East Coast will be able to reserve TRA tickets online starting at 6am, whereas those wanting to book southbound tickets along the West Coast will have to wait until Thursday. THSRC, on the other hand, will start taking ticket requests at 12am tomorrow. The company announced earlier that it would continue implementing its dual-color scheme, where passengers boarding trains marked blue on the schedule will be given 15 percent discounts. Those taking trains marked orange will be given 35 percent discounts. Trains with discounted fares mostly operate during non-peak hours.
■ ECONOMY
Voucher hotline launched
The Cabinet launched a free consumer voucher consultation hotline yesterday as part of its preparations for the upcoming consumer voucher scheme. Anyone with questions related to the scheme can dial 0800-88-3600 using a regular phone or 02-412-3600 with a cellphone, Premier Liu Chao-shiuan (劉兆玄) told a press conference yesterday. The hotline will be available between 8am and 10pm every day through the end of September, Liu said, adding that 35 personnel will man the phones even during the Lunar New Year holidays.
■ POLITICS
Shih confirms Lee meeting
Former Democratic Progressive Party chairman Shih Ming-teh (施明德) yesterday confirmed media reports he had a seven-hour closed-door meeting with former president Lee Teng-hui (李登輝). Shih denied he was planning a third force in domestic politics and that the meeting was about the “Taiwanese dream for the 21st century.” Shih made the remarks during a press conference in Taipei, where he said he hoped that Taiwan would be able to overcome political strife and find its own way to a new future. He said he hoped that by bringing up the issue, he would help the public gain a better understanding of what they should strive for. Shih said that it was important to build the Taiwanese dream of the 21st century as the public needs a dream with which it can strive for its goals. He said that he and Lee hoped to take the initiative in directing the future of Taiwan. Shih said he hoped to build Taiwan into “an island of freedom” in the 21st century, saying that he and Lee were seriously concerned about the current state of cross-strait relations and related policies. Shih said that if the two sides of the Taiwan Strait were to sign a peace accord, the government must clarify whether it was one between two political parties or one between two countries.
■ DIPLOMACY
Kuan to represent nation
Examination Yuan President John Kuan (關中) has been named the special envoy to attend the inauguration of Palau president-elect Johnson Toribiong and his running mate Kerai Mariur on Jan. 15, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs (MOFA) said yesterday. The delegation from Taiwan will include MOFA Deputy Minister Andrew Hsia (夏立言) and International Cooperation and Development Fund Secretary-General Chen Lien-gene (陳連軍). This year marks the 10th anniversary of official ties between the countries.
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