A Taiwanese businessman has volunteered to pay for the education of the nine-year-old son of Liao Chien-tsung (廖建宗), who was killed while piloting TransAsia Airways Flight GE235 when it crashed on Wednesday.
The businessman, surnamed Su (蘇), said he was deeply moved by Liao’s level-headed crisis management, even when staring death in the face.
“He managed to make the right decision in the last minutes of his life. In doing so, I think he achieved what others could not have achieved. I was really moved,” Su said, referring to what has been widely viewed as heroic actions by Liao.
Photo: Yang Cheng-chun, Taipei Times
Liao directed his aircraft, which was allegedly stalling, away from edifices in Taipei’s busy Donghu area (東湖). These reportedly included MRT Donghu Station, several commercial and residential buildings and a power substation.
“Had I been in the same situation as he, I don’t think I could have pulled it off,” Su said.
“If his son graduates from a postgraduate program in Taiwan, between NT$1 million and NT$2 million [US$31,821 and US$63,643] should be enough; if he graduates from an overseas program, it would cost me about NT$5 million or NT$6 million. If he goes to the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, it would run me about NT$7 million or NT$8 million. No matter which scenario it turns out to be, I will gladly pay the sum,” he said.
Su added that he is the same age as Liao was, and that Liao’s son is about the same age as Su’s two children, which provided him with much food for thought and prompted him to make his decision.
Su said he would deposit the first installment of NT$500,000 into a dedicated bank account on Tuesday — seven days after Liao’s death, when a seance is to be held in accordance with local tradition — when he plans to go visit Liao’s widow and son.
Su, a resident of Taichung, owns LED panel factories in China’s Henan and Guangzhou provinces, which reportedly generate about NT$100 million in annual revenue.
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