GOVERNMENT
MOTC censured over crashes
The Ministry of Transportation and Communications (MOTC) was censured by the Control Yuan on Wednesday over a series of tour bus accidents that occurred over the past three years. The frequent occurrence of accidents was attributable to the ministry’s failure to properly regulate tour bus operators, the Control Yuan said. Among the accidents mentioned was a crash on a mountain road in Hsinchu County on Dec. 9 last year that killed 13 passengers. It was caused by a failure of the bus’ brakes after the engine stalled. Just one day later, another tour bus overturned after hitting a rock wall along the Alishan Highway, leaving 15 people injured. Of the 75 tour bus accidents recorded between 2010 and last year, 72 percent were caused by human error, and in most cases, linked to the drivers, the Control Yuan said.
SPORTS
101 race registration opens
Registration to take part in a run up the nation’s tallest building has opened, with the top male and female finishers set to pocket prize money of NT$200,000 (US$6,649) each, the organizers said. The 2013 Taipei 101 International Run Up Competition, now in its ninth year, will be held on May 5. Registration will close on Sunday. The competition consists of four categories of racers — elite runners, corporate teams, fundraising relay teams and self-challenge individuals. The organizers said that 3,000 entries will be accepted for the individual self-challenge category, an increase from last year’s 2,500. Participants must climb 2,046 steps to the 91st floor of the building. A portion of the registration fees, ranging from NT$500 each for elite and individual runners to NT$20,000 for corporate and relay teams, will be donated to charities in Taipei, the organizers added.
ENTERTAINMENT
Will Smith to visit
US actor Will Smith is to visit Taipei next month along with his 15-year-old son, Jaden, to promote their new film After Earth, according to Sony Pictures. It will be their first visit to Taiwan. They are making an Asian promotion tour for their new science-fiction thriller, to be released in June. The tour, which is scheduled to start toward the end of this month, will also take Smith and his son to Japan and South Korea, Sony said. During their visit on May 3 and May 4, the Smiths are to meet their fans in Taipei’s Xinyi District (信義) on the evening of May 3, when Taipei 101 is to display the film’s title in lights. The movie, set 1,000 years in the future, stars the two Smiths as father and son Cypher and Kitai Raige.
TOURISM
Direct flights boost arrivals
Visitor arrivals in Hualien have increased significantly since direct charter flights were launched last year between Hualien County and several cities in China, airport authorities said. The number surged from 15,000 in 2011 to 32,000 last year, when charter flights began operating between Hualien and a number of Chinese cities, as well as Ishigaki in Japan, said Lin Kuo-yung (林國勇), head of the airport’s business department. The Chinese cities included Hangzhou, Wuhan, Tianjin and Zhengzhou, and earlier this year, Jinan, Qingdao and Shanghai were added to the list. The airport has projected that visitor arrivals will continue to grow and is planning to open a number of duty-free shops in response to the rapidly increasing numbers. Last year, the county recorded about 3.63 million visitors to its Taroko National Park, with Chinese tourists accounting for 49 percent of the total.
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