POLITICS
Inhofe replaces McCain
US Senator Jim Inhofe, cochair of the US Senate’s Taiwan Caucus, on Thursday was named chairman of the Senate Committee on Armed Services, replacing John McCain, who passed away from brain cancer on Aug. 25. Inhofe, a veteran, is a staunch supporter of US-Taiwan relations. In March, he and US Senator John Cornyn penned a joint letter to US President Donald Trump, urging the administration to support Taiwan’s procurement of F-35 fighter jets to boost its national defense capabilities. Inhofe wrote the letter after a visit to Taiwan in February, during which he met with President Tsai Ing-wen (蔡英文) to seek more opportunities for cooperation between the two nations. Following his new appointment, Inhofe tweeted that he was looking forward to working with the committee to ensure that the US military is ready to defend the US, as it faces “new and unprecedented threats different from anything we’ve seen before.”
TRAVEL
Driver’s license deal inked
The nation has signed a reciprocal driver’s license agreement with Rhode Island, the 28th US state to ink such a deal with Taiwan, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs said yesterday. Under the agreement, licensed drivers from Taiwan and Rhode Island can apply to obtain a license in each other’s territory without having to take road or written tests. Taiwan is the first foreign government with which Rhode Island has signed such an agreement, the ministry said in a statement. The arrangement will make life easier and more convenient for Taiwanese citizens living, working or studying in Rhode Island, it said. The agreement was signed on Thursday by the Taipei Economic and Cultural Office in Boston and Rhode Island’s Division of Motor Vehicles, the ministry said.
VEHICLES
Gas motorcycle ban on track
The government is committed to banning the sale of gasoline-powered motorcycles by 2035 as part of efforts to help combat air pollution, Premier William Lai (賴清德) said in a statement on Tuesday, urging all agencies to work together to help curb air pollution and promote renewable energy. The government is to offer technical assistance to existing domestic motorcycle manufacturers in transitioning from conventional bikes to smart electric scooters, as well as assistance in the development of highly efficient electric vehicle batteries, he said. The government will also push to expand the availability of battery charging stations across the nation, including the provision of more parking spaces for eco-friendly scooters, he said. Statistics provided by the Ministry of Transportation and Communications showed that there were 13.76 million registered scooters in Taiwan as of the end of December last year. In the first seven months of this year, the number of electric scooters sold numbered 37,000, the statistics show.
HOUSING
Home ownership at 85%
A survey released yesterday by the Directorate-General of Budget, Accounting and Statistics showed that 84.83 percent of Taiwanese owned homes last year, down 0.53 percentage points from a year earlier. Taiwanese tend to buy property as a way of keeping their wealth, the agency said, adding that it is unlikely to change any time soon. The poll also showed that 8.04 percent of households lived in rented homes, while 2.68 percent lived in a home borrowed from a different source or homes assigned by their companies or the government, the survey showed.
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