ENTERTAINMENT
Digital TV switchover begins
The National Communications Commission began its nationwide switchover to digital television yesterday by shutting down analogue television signals in Greater Taichung’s Dajia District (大甲). National Communications Commission Chairperson Su Herng (蘇蘅) announced that Dajia, known for housing one of the oldest Matsu (Goddess of the Sea) temples in the nation, had become the first district in the country to completely switch to digital TV. A ceremony was held at Greater Taichung City Hall to mark the landmark switchover, as well as the beginning of the larger nationwide analogue-to-digital conversion. According to the commission, all analogue television signals will be turned off by June 30 next year, ushering in a new era of digital TV. Su said TV users in Dajia would now be able to watch television shows on 16 high-definition channels free of charge.
SOCIETY
Japanese survivors arrive
A group of victims from Japan’s March 11 earthquake and tsunami arrived in Taiwan yesterday at the invitation of a program designed to help them recover. The program, which runs from the end of this month until mid-November, provides free round-trip airfare and accommodation to 1,000 quake victims for a two-week stay in Taiwan, Tourism Bureau officials said. The group of visitors, the first of a series, will also receive free EasyCards for use on public transport, tickets to the National Place Museum and a one-day trip to areas in central Taiwan struck by the 921 Earthquake. Meanwhile, a delegation led by Toshio Yoshimura, secretary-general of the Democratic Party in Fukuoka Prefecture, also arrived in Taiwan yesterday.
CRIME
Sex crime database released
The Judicial Yuan yesterday introduced a database on sexual crime sentences in a hope that it can serve as a reference for judges when they sentence sex offenders. Judicial Yuan Secretary-General Lin Ching-fang (林錦芳) told a press conference yesterday that the system could also help to reduce discrepancies between sex crime verdicts. The database contains more than 5,000 sexual crime rulings handed out from 2007 to last year, Lin said. The move came in the wake of criticism of the nation’s judges, after individuals convicted of sexually abusing children received what were widely considered to be excessively light sentences.
TRANSPORTATION
Government to seal wells
The government will spend about US$1.8 billion to seal nearly 1,000 wells over the next 10 years to save the high-speed rail system, which has been threatened by subsidence, an official at the Public Construction Commission said yesterday. The project would significantly reduce the rate of subsidence along a stretch of the rail in central Taiwan because of excessive ground water drainage, the official said. The 345km system using Japanese bullet-train technology is billed as one of the nation’s largest privately funded transport projects, with an estimated cost of US$15 billion. However, Taiwan High-Speed Rail Corp incurred about US$2 billion in losses, or roughly two-thirds of its capitalization, three years after the system went into operation in 2007. Last year, the company secured new funding of US$12 billion as part of efforts to pay off earlier loans.
POLITICS
No case against Su Chih-fen
The Yunlin District Prosecutors’ Office yesterday said it had decided not to indict Yunlin County Commissioner Su Chih-fen (蘇治芬) of the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) amid allegations she had embezzled public funds designated for a local religious festival. Wu Wei-chih (吳威志), the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) candidate in the Yunlin County commissioner election in 2009, filed a lawsuit against Su during the campaign. Wu said Su, as the head of the Yunlin County Government, had spent NT$60 million (US$2 million) to hold the “2008 Good God Festival” (好神節) and alleged that she used this as an opportunity to solicit NT$50 million from Formosa Petrochemical Corp, which has a plant in the county’s Mailiao Township (麥寮). Wu alleged that Su pocketed some of the money through a local cultural foundation. The district prosecutors’ office closed the case yesterday, citing insufficient evidence.
TRAVEL
More Taiwanese visit Europe
The number of Taiwanese visitors to Europe jumped 33 percent year-on-year from March to May this year, spurred by the EU’s visa exemption program, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs said yesterday. The number of Taiwanese visitors to Europe is expected to further surge this summer, the high season for travel, a ministry official said. The visa waiver, which took effect on Jan. 11, allowed Taiwanese nationals visa-free entry into a total of 35 countries and territories in Europe and was later expanded to include 11 overseas French territories and three Balkan countries, the official said. The visa-free measure has also helped to expand exchanges between Taiwan and Europe and strengthen bilateral ties, he said. For example, 44 groups of political and economic officials from Europe visited Taiwan in the first half of this year, up 66 percent from the same period the previous
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