■MEDIA
Lawmaker pans NCC plan
Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) Legislator Lo Shu-lei (羅淑蕾) yesterday voiced opposition to the National Communications Commission’s (NCC) proposal to relax restrictions on the government, political parties and the military from holding shares in media companies. The NCC said that while it was important for the three to stay out of the media, the rules had generated problems in some of the NCC’s rulings because some media corporations are publicly traded, meaning the government can purchase shares on the stock market. Lo yesterday said that allowing political parties to fund the media would be a setback to democracy. KMT Legislator Wu Yu-sheng (吳育昇), however, said the NCC’s proposal was “practical.”
■TRANSPORTATION
TRA increases cruise trains
The Taiwan Railway Administration (TRA) said yesterday that it would increase cruise train services next year because they had proven popular among travelers. TRA Deputy Director-General Chang Ying-huei (張應輝) said the TRA launched cruise train services in August last year to test the market response. Since then, the administration dispatched a total of 131 cruise trains. Approximately 27,000 passengers boarded the cruise trains, which helped generate revenue of NT$12.23 million (US$378,000) for the nation’s biggest railway system. “Tickets for cruise trains were sold quickly, with all the seats booked,” Chang said. Meanwhile, the TRA also published the first issue of its cruise train magazine for customers of cruise train services. The magazine introduces five major cruise train routes around the nation, and has a page for passengers to collect memorial stamps on the routes.
■SOCIETY
Designer wins red dot
Taiwan visual designer Lin Horng-jer (林宏澤) won a “best of the best” award in the communication design category of this year’s red dot design awards — the world’s biggest design competition. Lin, the first Taiwanese to win the title, was recognized for his project Save Me, which advocates nature conservation, Kaohsiung City’s Bureau of Cultural Affairs said. The piece is made up of three different images: a man embracing the Earth, a polar bear with melting icebergs in the background and three Formosan landlocked salmon — an endangered species from Taiwan. Lin is an associate professor at Tainan University of Technology’s Department of Visual Communication Design and president of the Taiwan Poster Design Association.
■CRIME
Cop stabbed 10 times
A policeman surnamed Lai (賴), 27, from Dazhi Police station in Taipei was stabbed more than 10 times in the neck and back by a crime suspect surnamed Dai (戴) on Monday evening. The policeman was pronounced dead after he was rushed to Mackay Memorial Hospital. The suspect, 50, was arrested by the military for taking pictures of the Hengshan Military Command Center in 2004 in accordance with the Military Stronghold And Fortress Terrain Act (要塞堡壘地帶法). But he fled after he was granted bail and had since been wanted by police. On Monday, Dai was arrested and taken under police escort in a car driven by Lai. Dai was not handcuffed nor was he searched before he was put in the backseat of the police car. When the car arrived at the police station, Dai took out a knife and stabbed Lai in a vain attempt to flee.
FLU SEASON: Twenty-six severe cases were reported from Tuesday last week to Monday, including a seven-year-old girl diagnosed with influenza-associated encephalopathy Nearly 140,000 people sought medical assistance for diarrhea last week, the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) said on Tuesday. From April 7 to Saturday last week, 139,848 people sought medical help for diarrhea-related illness, a 15.7 percent increase from last week’s 120,868 reports, CDC Epidemic Intelligence Center Deputy Director Lee Chia-lin (李佳琳) said. The number of people who reported diarrhea-related illness last week was the fourth highest in the same time period over the past decade, Lee said. Over the past four weeks, 203 mass illness cases had been reported, nearly four times higher than the 54 cases documented in the same period
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:
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
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