Traffic slow on freeways
Heavy traffic was reported yesterday on many freeways as people visited to their ancestors’ graves to clean their tombs and pay their respects on Tomb Sweeping Day. As of 11am, the average speed was less than 40kph for those traveling southbound on Sun Yat-sen Freeway (Freeway No. 1), between Hsinchu County’s Hukou Township (湖口) and Jhubei City (竹北), as well as southbound on Formosa Freeway (Freeway No. 3) between Taoyuan’s Dasi (大溪) and Longtan (龍潭) townships, the Freeway Bureau’s real-time data showed. Traffic was jammed on the north-south Chiang Wei-shui Memorial Freeway (Freeway No. 5) from 7am, with vehicles in some sections averaging speeds of less than 20kph, bureau data showed.
Four killed in Taoyuan fire
Three adults and one child yesterday died in a house fire in Taoyuan, officials said. The Taoyuan Fire Department said it received a report at 4:48am about a fire at a two-story house in Taoyuan District (桃園). A total of 26 fire trucks and 81 firefighters were dispatched to the scene, and the fire was extinguished at 5:37am, the department said. The four victims — a 44-year-old woman, a 43-year-old man, a 41-year-old man and a boy — were found dead, their bodies burned beyond recognition, on the second floor of the house, which was partly made of iron sheeting, fire officials said. Authorities are investigating the cause of the blaze.
Boarding passes going digital
Mobile boarding passes are soon to be made available to passengers taking domestic flights in Taiwan, a Civil Aeronautics Administration official said yesterday. Taiwan Taoyuan International Airport, Taipei International Airport (Songshan airport) and Kaohsiung International Airport allow international flight passengers to download boarding passes to their smartphones or other mobile devices, instead of printed boarding passes. That service is to be extended to domestic flight passengers before the end of the year, Air Transport Division official Han Chen-hua (韓振華) said. Mobile boarding passes are convenient, good for the environment and help airlines save on labor costs, Han said. Songshan airport installed the necessary scanning equipment this year and once other airports follow suit, airlines can begin offering mobile boarding passes, he added. Passengers would also to be able use their mobile passes to clear customs, he said.
Lai to assess Taichung move
Premier William Lai (賴清德) is to visit Taichung today to evaluate the possibility of relocating the Executive Yuan and Legislative Yuan there, a plan he has said he supports. Taichung Information Bureau Director-General Cho Kuan-ting (卓冠廷) said the Taichung City Government, governed by Mayor Lin Chia-lung (林佳龍), a Democratic Progressive Party member, welcomes Lai and the relocation proposal. According to the city government’s preliminary field assessment, ideal locations for the legislature include the 250 hectare Chenggong Ling (成功嶺) military base, a 273 hectare plot near the Taichung high-speed rail station and a 10.5 hectare ordnance readiness development center in front of the Wuri (烏日) Railway Station. The military base would be an appropriate location, Deputy Legislative Speaker Tsai Chi-chang (蔡其昌) said, adding that protests around the legislature frequently paralyze Taipei’s roads and could impair development.
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