ENTERTAINMENT
Indie bands to rock Fuji
Three Taiwanese indie bands will perform at the Fuji Rock Festival in Japan for the first time next week, the Government Information Office said. The office said it would sponsor The Wall Music, a concert organizer and music promoter, to take Sheng Xiang & Band (林生祥&樂團), Sugar Plum Ferry (甜梅號) and Silverbus (銀巴士) to Niigata Prefecture for the festival, which runs from July 29 to July 31. Sheng Xiang & Band plays a version of Hakka music, while Sugar Plum Ferry is one of the most famous post-rock bands in the country, the office said. The Fuji Rock Festival, one of the largest music festivals in Asia, has been held annually since 1997. It draws about 130,000 concertgoers from every year and features a lineup of 200 international bands.
TRAFFIC
Xinyi Rd bus lanes to move
Bus lanes along the entire length of Taipei City’s Xinyi Road will be moved to the center of the road starting next month to improve safety along the thoroughfare, which is the site on ongoing construction of the MRT’s Xinyi Line. Taipei City’s Department of Rapid Transit Systems said relocation of the bus lanes would provide a safer environment for car drivers and bus passengers. “Bus lanes on Xinyi Road have been relocated frequently due to construction of Xinyi Line. Moving all bus lanes and stops to central lanes could prevent traffic accidents caused by cars and buses changing lanes,” department Commissioner Chen Chun-liang (陳椿亮) said. There are six lanes on Xinyi Road, with bus lanes between Keelung Road and Zhongshan S Road either falling on the second or central lane, forcing cars in the fast lane to cross bus lanes at some points when switching to a slower lane, Chen said. Construction of the Xinyi Line is expected to be completed next year.
DIPLOMACY
Ma touts ‘modus vivendi’
President Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九) said on Wednesday that Taiwan would very likely have lost three to four of its diplomatic allies without the “modus vivendi” approach that his administration has adopted since he assumed office in 2008. “Modus vivendi” has been used by Ma to describe the cozy approach his administration has taken toward China. Ma cited a report by The Economist that said Panama, a Taiwanese diplomatic ally in Central America, proposed recognizing Beijing, but its proposal was rejected by China. The Economist piece attributed this to a diplomatic truce between China and Taiwan, in which China agreed not to poach any of Taiwan’s remaining allies as long as Taiwan did not seek new ones.
LABOR
Taipei to inspect employers
Taipei City Government’s Department of Labor will pay inspection visits in the second half of the year to 1,000 businesses that have been deemed the most likely to violate the Labor Standards Act (勞動基準法). Candidates include businesses in the banking, logistics, tourism and hotel industries, as well as tour bus companies because over-worked, tired bus drivers are likely cause serious accidents. Companies that hire temp workers and part-time workers, and those that are suspected of shortchanging workers on overtime pay will also be a major focus of the inspections, Department Commissioner Chen Yeh-shin (陳業鑫) said. The department investigated 422 cases of labor law violations last year. In 39 of the cases, employers were found to have violated Article 32 of the act, which regulates overtime work.
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