SOCIETY
Japanese engineer hailed
The governor of Japan’s Ishikawa Prefecture led a delegation to Greater Tainan yesterday to commemorate Yoichi Hatta, a Japanese engineer who contributed to the development of hydraulic engineering in southwest Taiwan. Governor Masanori Tanimoto and eight members of the Japanese House of Representatives laid flowers at the bronze statue of Hatta at the Wushantou Reservoir (烏山頭水庫). The delegation and Greater Tainan Mayor William Lai (賴清德) also visited the Yoichi Hatta Memorial Park near the reservoir. Lai proposed to Tanimoto that both sides should jointly organize tennis tournaments as part of their cross--cultural exchanges. Hatta was born in Ishikawa Prefecture and was posted to Taiwan in 1910 during the Japanese colonial period. He designed and built the Chianan Canal and Wushantou Reservoir between 1920 and 1930. The memorial park was inaugurated in May to honor the contribution Hatta made to hydraulic engineering in Taiwan.
TECHNOLOGY
Mudan switches to digital
Mudan Township (牡丹) in Pingtung County became the first area in the country to complete the changeover from from analog to digital cable television this year with the launch of its digital TV services on Saturday. The conversion is part of a plan by the National Communications Commission to discontinue all analog services by the end of June next year. The digital TV station in Mudan is capable of providing digital TV services to 704 households in three of the villages in the area, the commission said. The commission distributed digital set-top boxes to 47 low-income families in the township earlier this month and the installation of the digital system was completed on Thursday. It built seven digital TV transmission stations in rural areas last year and plans to build 50 more nationwide to boost the digital TV penetration rate.
AVIATION
Airport to upgrade security
Taiwan Taoyuan International Airport yesterday said it would install a high-tech fence around the perimeter of the airport to improve security. The fence, which will be equipped with a sensor and tracking system, is estimated to cost NT$180 million (US$6.24 million). The installation is expected to be completed by the middle of next year. Taoyuan International Airport Corp chairman Yeh Kuang-shih (葉匡時) said there would be no further lapses in airport security. He was referring to a security breach at the airport earlier this month when a woman managed to climb over the 3m high double-layered fence at the airport by climbing a tree. The woman then reached a restricted area and boarded a China Airlines plane.
SOCIETY
Bell ceremony to be held
The Taipei Representative Office in Germany will host a bell-ringing ceremony in Berlin on Aug. 23 to celebrate Republic of China Centennial Peace Day and the unveiling of a “bell of peace” on the outlying island of Kinmen, the office said on Saturday. The office has invited Taiwanese in Germany to take part in the ceremony at a pavilion in Volkspark Friedrichshain in Berlin. The office said the event would coincide with Kinmen’s unveiling of a 2m-high bell, made out of artillery shells, to symbolize the seeds of peace and Taiwan’s dedication to pursuing the universal value of peace. The bell at the Volkspark Friedrichshain in Germany was donated by World Peace Bell Association of Japan in 1989, the Taipei office said.
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