TRANSPORT
South-link line changes
Night service on the south-link railway line from Chaojhou in Pingtung to Taitung on the east coast are to be suspended from Wednesday to June 30, 2019, to expedite work on a national railway electrification project, the Taiwan Railways Administration (TRA) said yesterday. During the 21-month period, there will be no service on that line between 7pm and 6am from Monday to Thursday and on Saturdays, the TRA said, adding that highway shuttle buses will be provided to transport passengers at a 20 percent discount. Exceptions will be made during schools’ summer and winter breaks and national holiday periods of three days or more, with the railway night service running on full schedule, the TRA said. The 123km south-link line is the last section of the electrification network that is expected to be completed in 2020. When commercial operation of the fully electrified train network begins, a trip on an express train from Taipei to Taitung will take only three-and-a-half hours, the Ministry of Transportation and Communications said.
TRANSPORT
More trains for holidays
Taiwan High Speed Rail Corp (THSRC) yesterday said it would put more trains into service to meet the travel rush during the Mid-Autumn Festival (Oct. 4) and the Double Ten National Day (Oct. 7 to Oct. 10) holidays. Over the nine-day period, the company will provide an additional 194 trains on its regular routes — 99 northbound and 95 southbound — bringing the total number to 1,390. Bookings for the holiday period are to open at 12am tomorrow, with tickets available on the THSRC online booking system, the T Express mobile system, ticket machines at railway stations and at convenience stores, the company said. Early bird discounts and preferential fares for college students will remain in place for the holiday period, with discounts of 10 to 35 percent offered to passengers who book five to 28 days in advance.
SPORTS
Amis team win in Busan
Amis Aborigines from Palapay Village bagged three golds and one silver at the 7th Korea Open Busan International Dragon Boat Festival. The two-day event, which concluded on Saturday, featured 20 teams from 14 countries — Taiwan, Australia, Canada, Russia, Singapore, Qatar, the US, Philippines, United Arab Emirates, the Netherlands, Malaysia, Hong Kong, Switzerland and the host, South Korea. The Amis team yesterday returned to Palapay in Taitung, where they were greeted with festivities that included firecrackers, food and drinks. The team placed second in the Pingtung Donggang Dragon Boat Festival earlier this year.
FOREIGN AFFAIRS
Youth envoys in Singapore
A group of 25 youth ambassadors, sponsored by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, yesterday traveled to Singapore to promote public diplomacy through community service and other activities. Representative to Singapore Francis Liang (梁國新) received and hosted the group, saying the International Youth Ambassador Exchange Program incorporates the spirit of the Taiwanese government’s New Southbound Policy, giving young people a chance to visit Southeast and South Asian countries and widen their global perspective. Victor Chin (秦日新), head of the ministry’s youth ambassador program, said the four pillars of the program are experiential learning, community service, official visits and cultural diplomacy. The group is also to host a “Taiwan Night” cultural event.
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