■ TRANSPORTATION
MRT hit by another delay
Taipei Mass Rapid Transit’s (MRT) Red Line suffered a short-term delay yesterday morning after a train malfunction at 9:15am left the train stuck at Zhongshan Station. Taipei Rapid Transit Corp (TRTC) said services resumed at 9:38am. A total of nine trains were delayed by up to 21 minutes by the incident and about 5,000 passengers were affected, TRTC said. The train was sent to Beitou Depot for further inspection. TRTC spokesman Chao Hsiung-fei (趙雄飛) apologized for the malfunction and said the company would continue efforts to improve the efficiency of MRT lines.
■ SOCIETY
Children’s Day gets the nod
The Ministry of the Interior has decided to make Children’s Day, April 4, a national holiday once again but rejected the proposed Grandparents’ Day and Matsu (媽祖) Day national holidays, the ministry said in a statement released after a meeting on Wednesday to draft a bill regarding national holidays. The ministry said it decided to make Children’s Day a national holiday to allow parents to spend time with their children on the day. However, it said that while it does not oppose the Grandparents’ Day proposal by the Ministry of Education or religious holidays such as Matsu Day, it would not list them in the draft bill at the moment. The bill still has to go through Cabinet review before taking effect.
■ SOCIETY
Compatriots coming home
Overseas Compatriots Affairs Committee Chairman Wu Ying-yi (吳英毅) said yesterday that more than 10,000 expatriates are expected to return to Taiwan for next year’s national day celebrations. The committee is planning to work with the Red Cross Society to host a carnival at Taipei’s Liberty Square to celebrate the 100th anniversary of the Republic of China, Wu told the legislature. Meanwhile, Wu said the committee had proposed to the Ministry of Finance that expatriates who spend less than 183 consecutive days per year in Taiwan should be exempt from taxation.
■ SOCIETY
Obligation set to change
The Executive Yuan yesterday approved a draft amendment that would nullify the obligation of children who have reached the legal age of majority at 20 to support parents who have abused them. The Civil Code stipulates that lineal blood relatives have a mutual obligation to take care of one another. Under the draft amendment, children who have reached the age of 20 can ask a court to lessen their responsibility for the care of parents who have abused them, their spouses or linear blood relatives. Depending on the extent of the abuse, a request could be made for such children to be totally freed of their responsibilities. Requests could also be made in cases where the parents failed to adequately support their children and can show no good reason for not meeting their obligations. In cases where parents attempted to kill their children, sexually assaulted or abused them, or failed to maintain them for more than two years, the children would be absolved of any penalty for abandoning their parents. Premier Wu Den-yih (吳敦義) said existing laws that entitle parents in all the above categories to sue their adult children for abandonment or lack of support was unfair. The amendments are meant to redefine the obligations between parents and children, Wu said.
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
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
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