■ TRANSPORTATION
Officials punished over MRT
The Taipei City Government yesterday took disciplinary action against 21 officials and staff deemed to be responsible for the frequent malfunctions on the Wenhu MRT Line. Taipei Secretariat Director Yang Hsi-an (楊錫安), who oversaw the MRT project, was given a demerit while Taipei Deputy Secretariat Director Tan Gwa-guang (譚國光), who was also responsible for overseeing the project, was given two warnings. Chairperson of the Public Construction Commission Fan Liang-shiow (范良銹), former director of Taipei City’s Department of Rapid Transit Systems (DORTS), was given a written warning. Former director of the DORTS Tom Chang (常岐德), who stepped down last year following frequent system shutdowns and malfunctions on the line, escaped punishment due to his resignation, the city government said. The punishments follow the Control Yuan’s censure of the city government last month over the line.
■ TOURISM
Visa regulations relaxed
Taiwan is to extend by two months the period for which entry visas can be used by Chinese visitors, the Ministry of the Interior said yesterday. “We hope the new regulation will boost the number of mainland visitors to Taiwan ... and allow them more flexibility in planning their trips,” said an official from the ministry. Although Chinese visitors will now have three months in which to make their trip instead of just one, they will still only be allowed to spend a maximum of 15 days in Taiwan. More than 1.2 million Chinese have visited Taiwan since rules on Chinese tourists were first relaxed in July 2008, government data shows.
■ SOCIETY
Biker begins Taiwan trip
A 62-year-old Japanese man who has traveled around the world by motorcycle began a trip around Taiwan yesterday. Takashi Kasori began his motorcycle journeys in Africa when he was 20 and has since visited 133 countries and covered more than 1.25 million kilometers, a distance equal to circling the planet 31 times. He also holds a Guinness World Record for visiting 3,000 Japanese hot springs in 300 days on his motorbike in 2007. Kasori has traveled to the Andes in South America, Ayers Rock in Australia, and along the Silk Road in China. He said his most memorable destination is the Sahara desert, which he crossed in a series of 14 trips over a period of two-and-a-half years. “I see the motorcycle as part of my life,” Kasori said, adding that he tied himself to the vehicle when he was sleeping in the desert. This is the first time Kasori has visited Taiwan and he plans to visit temples during his six-day trip.
■ EDUCATION
Control Yuan gives censures
The Control Yuan yesterday censured the Executive Yuan, the Ministry of Education and local governments for failing to regulate schools that impose additional fees on elementary and junior school students, saying that many schools invent various pretexts to charge students additional fees. The government watchdog said the agencies censured had failed in their duties after ignoring a problem parents have long complained about. The Control Yuan demanded the agencies come up with effective solutions at the earliest possible opportunity. Control Yuan member Frank Wu (吳豐山) said some schools asked students to pay utility and maintenance fees for attending swimming classes and computer equipment maintenance fees for attending computer classes, which are supposed to be part of tuition fees.
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