AVIATION
Potholes cause delays
Taiwan Taoyuan International Airport’s engineering crew found 11 new potholes on a main taxiway connecting the north and south runways, according to airport officials yesterday. As of 11:15am, nine flights had been affected by the emergency repairs to the rain-damaged taxiway, with an average delay of 24 minutes, they said. Downpours this week have caused damage to the airport’s aging runways, which have been in use for almost 30 years. On Thursday, seven potholes were discovered on the south runway. According to Chinese-language media reports, one foreign airline complained that the airport did not have an organized plan for shutting down a runway and said that making complaints to airport authorities was like “a dog barking at a train.” The north runway was shut down for renovations earlier this year with completion scheduled for Dec. 13, but the plan was halted when the company involved abandoned the project because of financial difficulties. The government will re-open bidding for the project next week.
POLITICS
Election register to open
Registration for the Jan. 14 presidential and legislative elections will take place between Nov. 21 and Nov. 25, the Central Election Commission announced yesterday. In the legislative poll, 73 seats in regional constituencies and six among the country’s indigenous population will be up for election, according to a notice published by the commission. There will also be 34 at-large seats, and seats representing overseas Taiwanese determined in proportion to the number of ballots garnered by the political parties, the notice said. A political party must win at least 5 percent of the votes in the election to be eligible for a share of the at-large seats. Also, at least 50 percent of each party’s at-large seats must be filled by women, in accordance with the Constitution.
CULTURE
‘Blowfish’ wins in Geneva
The film Blowfish (河豚), by Taiwanese director Lee Chi-yuan (李啟源), won two prestigious awards on Thursday at this year’s Geneva International Film Festival: the International Federation of Film Critics award and the TITRA Film SA award, which aims to encourage film distribution. Lee said he was overjoyed by the outcome. He said winning the TITRA Film SA award meant Blowfish would be screened in Swiss cinemas, probably next year. Lee was also awarded a cash prize of 5,000 Swiss francs (US$5,500) from Geneva’s city government. Of the 10 films nominated for the International Competition for Feature category, Blowfish was the only Asian offering. Lee’s film is a love story about a lonely baseball coach whose wife has left him and a woman whose boyfriend has cheated on her. Officials at Taiwan’s representative office in Geneva said judges were impressed with the film’s story and technical level.
DIPLOMACY
MOU signed with Italy
The government signed a memorandum of understanding (MOU) with Italy yesterday to promote bilateral cooperation on customs issues, according to the Ministry of Finance. The ministry said in a statement that under the MOU, customs authorities in the two countries agree to strengthen cooperation in the fight against smuggling and make efforts to improve customs clearance efficiency. Italy is Taiwan’s fourth--largest trade partner in the EU market, with bilateral trade reaching US$4.4 billion last year. The MOU provides a legal foundation for an expanded customs partnership, the statement 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
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