TRANSPORTATION
South Link upgrade begins
A ceremony was held in Taitung yesterday to mark the beginning of the electrification of the South Link Railway, which aims to shorten the travel time between Taitung and Pingtung. Upon the project’s completion, travel from Taitung to Pingtung is expected to take 90 minutes, making it possible to reach Taitung from Taipei within three-and-a-half hours, the Ministry of Transportation and Communications said. Shortening the ride between Taitung and Pingtung will complete a “full circle of happiness” for Taitung residents, Taitung County Commissioner Justin Huang (黃健庭) said. The 123.4km-long railway electrification project linking Taitung and Chaojhou Township (潮州) in Pingtung County is estimated to cost NT$27.9 billion (US$907.88 million).
CRIME
Officer disciplined over shot
A police officer who fired his pistol in anger into the air on Friday night will be disciplined, Taipei’s Wenshan First Precinct said. The policeman, Hung Hui-hsiung (洪輝雄), had asked to take 10 days off to take care of his ailing father in Kinmen County, but the request was rejected by his superior because of the precinct’s tight schedule ahead of local elections on Nov. 29. Hung reportedly stormed out to the parking lot late on Friday, fired his pistol into the air and yelled: “My superior is bullying me,” scaring his coworkers. The precinct said Hung, who had been honored as distinguished officer, was barred from carrying a gun and would face disciplinary action and a trial. Hung’s sister, Hung Juo-shan (洪若珊), who is the speaker of the Lieyu Urban Township (烈嶼) Council in Kinmen and is seeking re-election, said her brother’s superior was “callous” in turning down the request, but added that Hung Hui-hsiung’s reaction was “a bit irrational.”
TRANSPORTATION
345,000 rode new MRT line
Taipei’s MRT ferried about 345,000 passengers on its new Songshan Line on Saturday, the first day of its operation, the Taipei Rapid Transit Corp (TRTC) said yesterday. There are eight stations on the 8.5km-long Songshan Line, from Ximen (西門) in Taipei’s old downtown area to the eastern end of Songshan (松山), where passengers can transfer to nationwide rail services. The line opened at 6am on Saturday, operating free of charge or with reduced tariffs for EasyCard holders who enter or exit the eight stations during its first month of operation. About 725,000 riders received the reduced-price service on that day, the TRTC said. The 15-minute end-to-end ride is an extension of the Xindian Line, from Xindian District (新店) in New Taipei City, south of Taipei.
TOURISM
Kinmen envisions landmark
The Kinmen County Government expects a planned passenger service center in the Port of Kinmen to become a landmark, county officials have said. The Shuitou Passenger Service Center has been designed as a tourist attraction that offers transportation services, the officials said on Thursday last week. A budget of NT$1.87 billion (US$60.8 million) has been allocated for it, the county said. The international gateway was jointly designed by Japanese and Taiwanese architecture firms — Japan’s Junya Ishigami and Associates and Bio-architecture Formosana headed by Chang Ching-hwa (張清華) — to help travelers obtain efficient customs clearance and other services, the government said. It estimated that the building, to be completed by the end of 2017, will serve between 3.5 million and 5 million passengers annually.
FLU SEASON: Twenty-six severe cases were reported from Tuesday last week to Monday, including a seven-year-old girl diagnosed with influenza-associated encephalopathy Nearly 140,000 people sought medical assistance for diarrhea last week, the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) said on Tuesday. From April 7 to Saturday last week, 139,848 people sought medical help for diarrhea-related illness, a 15.7 percent increase from last week’s 120,868 reports, CDC Epidemic Intelligence Center Deputy Director Lee Chia-lin (李佳琳) said. The number of people who reported diarrhea-related illness last week was the fourth highest in the same time period over the past decade, Lee said. Over the past four weeks, 203 mass illness cases had been reported, nearly four times higher than the 54 cases documented in the same period
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