■TRANSPORTATION
MOTC to probe airport
Deputy Minister of Transportation and Communications Yeh Kuang-shih (葉匡時) said yesterday the ministry will set up a task force to assess the problems at Taiwan Taoyuan International Airport. The task force will be headed by Chang Yu-hern (張有恆), a former director-general of the Civil Aeronautics Administration (CAA) and currently the chairman of the Aviation Safety Council under the Executive Yuan. The airport has been the subject of a series of negative reports recently, including complaints about its restaurants and luggage carts, as well as the collapse of a jet bridge and reports of a wild party at the airport’s Central Control Center.
■SPORTS
Soccer talent needed
The Chinese Taipei Football Association (CTFA) called on the government to cultivate local soccer players from an early age and to establish soccer coaching in elementary schools around the country in an effort to promote the sport. CTFA Chairman Lu Kun-shan (盧崑山) said the golden age to start cultivating soccer players is between eight and 12, and that the association is outlining a program with the Ministry of Education and Sports Affairs Council to organize soccer education for school children and hold international tournaments. Lu said that the FIFA World Cup has a high market value and has become a factor in forging national solidarity for countries that compete, and that it is a pity Taiwan is absent from the eye-catching event. He said the government and local companies should work together to sponsor and cultivate athletes in Taiwan.
■ENVIRONMENT
Professor honored in US
Taiwan-native James Liao (廖俊智), a professor of chemical and biomolecular engineering at the University of California, Los Angeles, has been awarded a prestigious chemistry prize in the US for synthesizing fuels from carbon dioxide. The development, which won this year’s Presidential Green Chemistry Challenge Award from the US Environmental Protection Agency, has tremendous potential for cutting carbon emissions and saving fossil fuels, Liao said in an interview with the Central News Agency. “The research is expected to enter mass production in five years at the soonest,” he said. “Once it enters mass production, it could replace 14 kinds of petroleum-based fuels and eliminate about 500 million tonnes of CO2 emissions.” Liao said scientists have only been able to indirectly convert carbon dioxide into liquid fuels in the past, but his research has successfully developed a process that genetically modifies cyanobacterium to consume carbon dioxide to produce the liquid fuel isobutanol. Isobutanol is one of a number of higher alcohols considered to be superior to ethanol as a fuel because of a higher energy density.
■FESTIVAL
French party tonight
A street party will be held at National Taipei University of Technology (NTUT) today to celebrate France’s National Day. The Association des Francais de Taiwan (AFT), a nonprofit organization that aims to promote French culture in the Taiwanese community, is co-organizing the event with FreshTreks, a team building and event organizing specialist. The Bastille Day celebration, being held for the fourth time, is the biggest event of the year for the AFT, the organizers said. The party starts today at 6:30pm and will feature good food, prizes, sketch artists and live bands. The entrance fee is NT$200, while admission is free for children under 12.
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