TRANSPORTATION
Gondola resuming service
The Maokong Gondola cable car system in Taipei is scheduled to resume service at 8:30am today following a 31-day suspension for general maintenance. New carriages bearing images of leopards, zebras, giraffes and peacocks will also be launched to take passengers 275m up the mountain in the Maokong (貓空) area of Wenshan District (文山), Taipei Rapid Transit Corp said. The company also extended the expiration date of the 9,510 free “revisit” tickets distributed to passengers who made bookings on the gondola’s online system and took the cable car trip in January. The tickets are valid until June 30, but because of the maintenance period, the date has been extended to July 31, the company said. The system, which went into operation in 2007, saw its total passenger rides reach 10 million in August last year, according to the company’s Web site.
AID
East Africa to receive rice
Taiwan is donating 1,150 tonnes of rice to East African countries for refugees who have been displaced by famine and the region’s worst drought in 60 years, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs said yesterday. The food aid will be shipped by boat in three batches, NGO Affairs Committee Deputy Chairman Wu Rong-chuan (吳榮泉) said at a donation ceremony at the Port of Taichung. The rice has been packaged in 3kg bags that will be easy to carry and bear the words of “Love From Taiwan,” along with an imprint of the Republic of China flag, Wu added. The Agriculture and Food Agency inspected the rice to ensure that only the best quality is being sent, especially because the shipment will take 35 days for delivery, Wu said. The affected countries, including Kenya, Somalia and Ethiopia, were hit by a severe drought in July last year that caused the displacement of 13 million people, Wu said, adding that Somalian refugees have been flooding into Kenya in the wake of the drought, which is aggravating the famine situation.
SOCIETY
Face-licker sentenced
A Thai man was sentenced yesterday to seven months in prison for forcefully kissing a local woman and licking her face in New Taipei City (新北市). The man was convicted on obscenity charges because the act, which took place in February, was carried out against the woman’s wishes, the Banciao District Court said. According to the court, he grabbed the woman as she was jogging at night in a stadium. When they fell down as she resisted, he forcefully kissed and licked her until passersby heard her screams and intervened. He can appeal the ruling.
HEALTH
Vaccine project launched
Taiwan and Canada will work together to develop new vaccines in a new project with a target of completing first-phase clinical trials within five years, Taiwanese officials said during a conference held in Canada earlier this week. Kuo Ming-liang (郭明良), director-general of the National Science Council’s Department of Life Sciences, who led the Taiwanese delegation, said they hope one or two of the vaccines will be suitable for clinical trials in three years. Representative to Canada David Lee (李大維) said Taipei has been working closely with Ottawa in the scientific field over the past decade, collaborating on more than 40 projects. Kuo said Taiwan and Canada each have advantages in developing vaccines against new infectious diseases and could complement each other.
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