TRANSPORT
Electric buses in September
Greater Kaohsiung is to see 11 electric buses taking to the streets as soon as September, once all the recharging stations have been installed. The buses will run between the Zuoying high-speed railway station in Zuoying District (左營) and Cishan District (旗山), said Huang Jung-hui (黃榮輝), an official with the city’s transportation bureau. The first eight vehicles, completed last month, were not put into service because the recharging stations had not been fully installed, Huang said. He added that the 11 recharging stations, all in Cishan, are scheduled to be in place by the end of next month. When fully charged, the buses, built with government funding of NT$57 million (US$1.9 million), can cover 200km, or approximately two round-trips, Huang said.
LABOR
Teenagers get less pay
More than 90 percent of employers in Greater Taichung pay their teenage part-time workers less than the minimum wage and do not provide health and labor insurance coverage for them, according to a recent poll. The survey showed that while 69.7 percent of teenagers in Taichung are interested in working part time during the summer vacation, only 49.9 percent are aware that their employers are required by law to provide them with labor and health insurance coverage. Among the 33.7 percent of teens who said they had part-time work experience, 72.8 percent reported the pay they had received was below the minimum hourly wage of NT$103, while 89.8 percent said they had not been offered health and labor insurance coverage, according to the survey conducted by the Taichung-based Chionyuan Social Welfare Foundation. The survey was conducted from June 7 to June 20 among 1,178 students in junior and senior-high schools.
NATIONAL SECURITY
Council denies it is ‘tool’
The National Security Council on Tuesday denied a report that accused it of having been a political tool for the Chinese Nationlist Party (KMT) by monitoring opposition parties in the run-up to the January elections. The council said in a statement that the Hong Kong magazine Yazhou Zhoukan’s report about a flawed mechanism in the agency “is false.” The magazine reported that the mechanism to integrate the country’s security system and intelligence resources has become a tool for political wrestling between a ruling party and opposition parties. The reported also said the council gave an order to the Investigation Bureau to monitor the activities of opposition parties ahead of the elections. The council said had already explained that it did not conduct any intelligence gathering targeting opposition parties when a similar report emerged in December last year.
HEALTH
Missions are ‘valuable’
Taiwan’s overseas medical missions are a projection of the nation’s soft power, Minister of Foreign Affairs Timothy Yang (楊進添) said yesterday at a meeting held to encourage hospitals to take part in international humanitarian projects. Describing medical missions as “valuable assets,” Yang said Taiwan’s success in conducting such missions since 1962 has gained the acclaim of its allies. Taiwan’s initiatives have also enabled the country to establish connections with other major international organizations, he told an audience of representatives from more than a dozen hospitals nationwide, citing a recent health program launched with Taiwan’s help in the Gambia that has greatly benefited pregnant mothers and babies.
MUSIC
Taichung hosts horn contest
Taichung will host its first international saxophone competition in mid-October as part of the city government’s efforts to promote the instrument. The contest will be held from Oct. 17 to Oct. 19 as a precursor of the city’s annual Oct. 20 to Oct. 28 jazz festival, Greater Taichung Deputy Mayor Hsiao Chia-chi (蕭家淇) said. To attract competitors from home and aboard, a top prize of US$30,000 will be offered, he said. Taiwanese ballads, including The Moon Represents My Heart (月亮代表我的心), Waiting for Spring Wind (望春風) and Flower in the Rainy Night (雨夜花), will be required tunes for all entries, he added. He said Greater Taichung’s Houli Township (后里) is known to saxophone players around the world as “the home of the horn,” thanks to its many, mostly family-owned, instrument manufacturing operations. More than 60 percent of the world’s saxophones come from Houli, he added.
HEALTH
Fish fail drugs tests
As much as 50 percent of East Asian fourfinger threadfin failed recent checks for drug residues, with some found to contain the antibiotic sulfonamide, according to the Department of Health’s Food and Drug Administration. The agency said it examined 67 products last month and nine of them failed the standards set for veterinary drug residue. Of the 67, 16 were threadfin products and eight failed the tests, it said, adding that five of the eight substandard threadfin products contained sulfonamides, while the other three contained leucomalachite green, a synthetic dye. Lin Chieh-liang (林杰樑), director of the toxicology department at the Chang Gung Memorial Hospital, said excessive consumption of leucomalachite green can lead to liver damage and deformities in children.
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