TRANSPORTATION
Outages on High Speed Rail
About 5,000 passengers were yesterday affected by disruptions on the nation’s bullet train service which were caused by power outages, according to the Taiwan High Speed Rail Corp. Fifteen trains were delayed for more than five minutes starting at 9:40am, when a power outage forced the company to shut down one of the lines between Hsinchu and Miaoli counties. Trains had to take turns using the remaining line, the company said. Two trains were delayed for more than 30 minutes. The problems were fixed at 10:31am, and normal service resumed. According to the company’s refund policy, passengers who were delayed for more than half an hour but less than an hour can be refunded half the amount of their ticket. Almost 1,000 passengers were eligible for the refunds, the company said.
CULTURE
Speech contest goes global
Radio Taiwan International (RTI) is inviting foreign nationals from around the world to compete in its Mandarin Speech Contest for a top prize of NT$100,000. Registration is open until April 7, RTI said yesterday. The station has hosted the contest annually since 2004. This year is the first time the contest has been extended to those living outside of Taiwan. The competition this year is to take the format of role-playing, using performing arts skills to depict a profession, RTI said. For the first time, the contestants are required to submit a preliminary video audition. Finalists are to then compete in person in Taiwan. According to the Hanguang Education Foundation, a co-organizer of the contest, the 20 finalists are also eligible to enter a poetry recital competition that offers a top prize of NT$30,000.
SOCIETY
Jam Hsiao gets hate mail
Taiwanese Mandopop singer Jam Hsiao (蕭敬騰), who narrowly escaped being splashed with urine and feces in October last year, received a threatening letter on Friday, according to his agency. Enclosed in the letter addressed to Hsiao were mealworms and “ghost money,” paper money burned for the dead, Warner Music Taiwan said. The company reported the case to the police, and the letter was sent to the forensic science center for further investigation. The attack on Hsiao in October last year was far more graphic, when people riding scooters threw feces and urine at the singer’s car, hitting his driver. Four men were charged with intimidation and public insult the following month. Despite the arrests, the suspects are not considered to be behind the harassment campaign that has sparked widespread speculation.
DIPLOMACY
Working holidays in Hungary
Taiwan and Hungary signed a working holiday agreement on Friday that would allow 100 young adults per year from each country to visit and work in the other, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs said. Hungary is the first country in Central Europe and the 10th in the world to have signed a working holiday pact with Taiwan, the ministry said. The nation has similar agreements with four European countries — Germany, Ireland, Belgium and the UK — as well as with Australia, Canada, Japan, South Korea and New Zealand. Under the new deal, citizens aged between 18 and 35 who are proficient in English are eligible to participate in the one-year program, which could help them build friendships while working and traveling, the ministry 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