AVIATION
Flights canceled over storm
EVA Airways and Tigerair Taiwan yesterday announced that flights between Taiwan and Okinawa, Japan, would be canceled today due to Tropical Storm Prapiroon. EVA would cancel flights BR112, BR186, BR113 and BR185 between Taoyuan and Okinawa and Tigerair flights IT232, IT233, IT2232 and IT2233 between the two destinations, they said. Tigerair flights IT288 and IT289 between Kaohsiung and Okinawa would also be canceled, the budget carrier said. As of 2pm yesterday, Prapiroon was centered about 500km east of Taipei, moving north-northwest at 22kph, Central Weather Bureau data showed. With a radius of 100km, the storm had maximum sustained winds of 90kph, with gusts of up to 119kph, the bureau said.
TRANSPORTATION
Airport MRT holds prize draw
Passengers riding the Taoyuan Airport MRT line to Taiwan Taoyuan International Airport this and next month can enter a prize draw, the Taoyuan Metro Corp announced on Friday. Prizes include five-day round-trip tickets between Taiwan and Phuket in Thailand, online prepaid telephone credit and cash prizes of NT$10,000, the company said. To enter the draw, passengers need to scan a QR code and enter their personal identification number or passport number before exiting the airport’s Terminal 1 or Terminal 2 stations. The code can be found on posters at the stations’ information counters, it said. Entrants whose ID cards’ last four digits match the numbers for the “Four Star” lottery drawn the following day could claim a prize, the company said, adding that those who participate on a weekend would be entered into the prize draw of the following Monday. The prize draw is reserved for Taiwanese nationals only, it said.
DIPLOMACY
MECO disputes bad results
A survey in which Taiwanese respondents said that they viewed the Philippines unfavorably is “lamentable,” the Manila Economic and Cultural Office (MECO) said in a statement on Friday. “While the result of the survey is truly lamentable, we will continue to strive in our efforts to promote cooperation between the Philippines and Taiwan,” MECO Chairman and Resident Representative Angelito Banayo said. The office would like to know the demographic makeup of the respondents and what criteria the survey used, Banayo added. A survey by the Taiwanese Public Opinion Foundation on June 17 listed the Philippines as the second-most-disliked country among Taiwanese, after North Korea. The survey asked respondents about their image of 10 countries or regions and showed that Singapore (liked by 88.2 percent of respondents), Japan (84.6 percent) and Canada (82.3 percent) were viewed most favorably.
TOURISM
Rail bike opens for trial run
A rail bicycle ride in Miaoli County is to begin trial operations next month, the county government said. Construction of the ride, called Rail Bike, has been completed, and it is being tested on the tracks, with a planned conclusion date of Aug. 15, the county’s Culture and Tourism Bureau said. During the trial run, people older than eight can ride the four-seat, pedal-powered railcars shaped like locomotives for NT$280 per person, an official said. The official opening of the 6km stretch is scheduled for January next year. The ride uses parallel tracks from the Old Mountain Line Railway, a 15.9km route that was operational from 1903 to 1998 and stretches from Sanyi Township in Miaoli to Houli District in Taichung.
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