TRANSPORTATION
Airlines to add new routes
Low-cost carriers Thai Vietjet Air and Thai Lion Air are to start operating in Taiwan from July and August, respectively, the Civil Aeronautics Administration said yesterday. Thai Vietjet is to provide 20 charter flights between Bangkok and Taichung, and 20 between Bangkok and Hualien between July 4 and the end of September, the agency said. Lion Air is to operate scheduled flights from Aug. 1, offering daily service between Taoyuan and Bangkok. Flights between Taiwan and Thailand have seen a surge thanks to the government’s “new southbound policy,” which has since August last year enabled Thai visitors to enter Taiwan without visas. The number of Thai visitors to Taiwan last year numbered 195,640, year-on-year growth of about 60 percent, according to the Tourism Bureau.
ENTERTAINMENT
S Korean star Jo visits
South Korean actor Jo Jung-seok, who starred in the hit Korean television drama Jealousy Incarnate last year, arrived in Taiwan yesterday and is scheduled to meet with fans today. His fourth visit to Taiwan, the 36-year-old actor is to meet with fans at National Taiwan University’s Sports Center in Taipei. The event would be his first overseas fan meeting. Jo made his acting debut in the musical The Nutcracker in 2004, and his breakout role came in 2012, when he played a supporting role in the hit Korean film Architecture 101. He is best known for his role as a chef in the drama Oh My Ghostess in 2015 and as a television reporter and news anchor in Jealousy Incarnate last year, which was a hit in South Korea and across Asia. In 2013 and 2014, he was appointed “tourism ambassador” by the Tourism Bureau.
WEATHER
Heat illnesses on the rise
Higher temperatures have led to a spike in the number of people seeking emergency treatment for heat-related illnesses, the Health Promotion Administration said. From Tuesday to Thursday, 69 people visited emergency rooms for heat-related issues, raising this month’s total to 83, the agency said. Anyone can develop illnesses from heat, it said, but the most vulnerable groups are babies, children, senior citizens, people with chronic diseases, people on medicine, outdoor workers, those working in closed spaces and people who are overweight. All people, but especially those in the vulnerable groups, should avoid high temperatures to prevent ailments such as heat stroke, heat spasms and heat failure, the agency said. It also urged people to drink at least 2 liters of water a day, even if they are not thirsty.
SOCIETY
Men detained for duck theft
Three men in Yunlin County have been detained by police as part of an investigation into allegations that they stole about 200 ducks. The animals had escaped from a pen in Dounan Township (斗南) after a fence collapsed during a torrential downpour and flooding that started on Friday last week, police said on Thursday. After the floodwater receded, the duck farmer visited the pen and found three men rounding up the ducks, police said, adding that he told them to stop, but they ignored him. The farmer immediately reported the men to the police for theft of property, they said. County police headed to the site where they seized about 200 stolen ducks and the truck in which the three men allegedly planned to transport them, they said, adding that the men were arrested, brought to the police station and charged with theft.
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