DIPLOMACY
Hsinchu station turns 100
A descendant of Japan’s imperial family attended the celebration of the Hsinchu Railway Station’s 100th anniversary yesterday along with Hsinchu Mayor Hsu Ming-tsai (許明財). Tsuneyasu Takeda, who is the great-great-grandson of the Meiji Emperor, described the station as a precious asset that had served the public for a century and said he hoped that Japan and Taiwan could continue their close friendship. Expressing his gratitude to Taiwan for its help after the earthquake and tsunami that battered Japan in 2011, Takeda said he hoped that the Hsinchu Station and Tokyo Station, which will celebrate its 100th birthday next year, could become sister stations to symbolize the countries’ bond.
WeATHER
Rains bring little relief
Recent rains have done little to refill the nation’s depleted reservoirs or ease the water shortages that are increasing around the country, Water Resources Agency Director-General Yang Wei-fu (楊偉甫) said yesterday. Despite rains bringing 15mm to 60mm of precipitation to northwestern Taiwan, Yang said the reservoirs had accumulated limited rainfall because the downpours of the past two days had only lasted briefly and were not concentrated in catchment areas. The Shihmen Reservoir (石門水庫) in Taoyuan County, which has already begun first-stage water rationing measures, was one of the reservoirs that did get a bit of relief. Yang said the rainfall did help farmers and slighlty reduced agricultural demand for reservoir water, but it was still too early to say how much the precipitation had helped overall water supplies.
SOCIETY
Local man missing in China
A Taiwanese man went missing in southern China on Saturday after the boat he was on capsized in the Guilin area, Chinese media reported yesterday. Xinhua news agency said that the boat, carrying 16 tourists, overturned due to rapid currents and skipper error in a river in Guilin’s Guanyan scenic area. Chinese officials confirmed that the boat was on a sightseeing tour in a cave on the river when it suddenly flipped over. The report said 15 people had been rescued, but the Taiwanese man was still unaccounted for. The man, identified by his surname, Hsu (許), was from Jinshan District (金山) in New Taipei City (新北市), and was reportedly in his 60s, the Travel Agent Association of Taiwan said. Preliminary information received by the association indicated that Hu was visiting China with relatives or friends and was not with a tour group. As of yesterday afternoon, rescue efforts were still ongoing.
TOURISM
Taipei hotel prices rising
The average hotel prices paid by Chinese tourists in Taipei were appreciably higher last year than a year earlier because of growing tourist demand, the results of a survey by an online hotel reservation company showed yesterday. The Hotels.com survey found that Chinese tourists paid 10 percent more for hotel rooms in Taipei and 8 percent more for rooms in other places around the country last year than in 2011, Hotels.com senior marketing manager Jessica Chuang (莊佩芙) said. Taiwan was included in the Web site’s Hotel Price Index report for the first time last year because the nation has become a popular destination among Chinese travelers, Chuang said. China is the largest source of foreign tourists in Taiwan, followed by Japan. The survey also found that Tokyo, Osaka, Hong Kong and Kyoto were Taiwanese travellers’ favorite destinations last year.
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