PATENTS
Lawmakers pass resolution
Lawmakers complained yesterday that the patent review process is too slow and passed a resolution asking the government to address the problem. Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) Legislator Lu Hsueh-chang (呂學樟) said the Intellectual Property Office has a long backlog of patent applications that is hurting industrial competitiveness. As of last month, the backlog stood at 155,317 applications. The office processed 28,000 applications last year and aims to review 34,000 cases this year. The resolution demands that the office process 30 percent more applications each year and stipulates that it must finish reviewing current backlogged applications within four years. To speed up this work it wants the patent office to fill 39 job openings for permanent employees and 170 openings for employees on five-year contracts as soon as possible.
DIPLOMACY
Wang to visit Japan
Legislative Speaker Wang Jin-pyng (王金平) will lead a delegation on a two-day visit to Japan to show support for the earthquake-devastated country and help resolve the matter of donations from Taiwan’s private sector. The seven-member delegation, including government officials and representatives from the Red Cross Society of the Republic of China and World Vision Taiwan, will depart on Wednesday, Wang said. The visit will be low-profile because Japan is in the stage of post-disaster recovery, he said. Wang will meet officials of the Democratic Party of Japan and Liberal Democratic Party, Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) Legislator Lee Hung-chun (李鴻鈞) said.
CROSS-STRAIT TIES
Tainan-China flights mulled
The government is mulling whether to allow Tainan Airport to offer direct flights to China, Minister of Transportation and Communications Mao Chi-kuo (毛治國) said yesterday. After the merger and upgrade of Tainan City and Tainan County to a special municipality in December last year, the authorities plan to make better use of the airport by authorizing it to handle charter flights to China, Mao said during a legislative session in response to a question from Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) Legislator Lin Ming-chen (林明溱) on the limited traffic at the Tainan and Chiayi airports. The government is also evaluating whether to include the Chiayi facility as part of the plan, Mao added.
ENVIRONMENT
Group pushes green energy
A civic group launched a drive yesterday to push for the development of “green” or clean power in Taiwan. The group, the Crazy About Green Power Alliance, said the government should work toward increasing renewable energy. The members of the alliance said that they had collected nearly 800 signatures to pressure the government into allowing people to “choose the way electricity is produced.” They said they would prefer to have clean energy, even if it costs more. Huang Hui-chun (黃惠君), an alliance member, said state-run Taiwan Power Co (Taipower) mainly uses environmentally unfriendly thermal and nuclear power plants to generate electricity. Taipower has also been the sole power behind the -decision-making on the country’s energy policy, Huang added. Georg Gesk, a German national and a professor of law at Hsuan Chuang University in Hsinchu City, urged Taiwan to emulate Germany, where a great number of cities have been increasingly replacing thermal and nuclear power plants with green sources of energy.
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