POLITICS
Eric Chu headed to US
Former New Taipei City mayor Eric Chu (朱立倫) yesterday said he would leave tomorrow for an eight-day trip to California that is to focus on Silicon Valley businesses. Chu, who has said he is interested in seeking the Chinese Nationalist Party’s (KMT) nomination for next year’s presidential election, said that the focus of his prospective campaign would be building a new economy for the nation, so he is calling the trip “Power up Taiwan: Taiwan New Economy.” He said he would visit the headquarters of Apple, Airbnb, Facebook, Google and Tesla, as well as live-streaming video platform Twitch, software company Palantir Technologies and several start-ups. He is scheduled to meet with YouTube cofounder Steve Chen (陳士駿) and Stanford University professor Francis Fukuyama, and is to deliver a speech at the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies at Stanford, he added.
TRANSPORTATION
Circular Line start date set
The first section of the Taipei Mass Rapid Transit System’s Circular Line, which will encircle New Taipei City, is scheduled to begin operations in the fourth quarter, Taipei Mayor Ko Wen-je (柯文哲) posted on Facebook late on Monday. The 14-station Yellow Line will connect Dapinglin to the New Taipei Industrial Park, passing through Sindian (新店), Jhonghe (中和), Banciao (板橋) and Sinjhuang (新莊) without going through Taipei, thereby reducing travel time. Taipei Department of Rapid Transit Systems Chief Secretary Wang Wei (王偉) yesterday confirmed that the first phase of construction would be completed in the middle of the year, followed by on-site inspections by the city government and the Ministry of Transportation and Communications. If the ministry gives its approval, service would begin in the fourth quarter, Wang said.
PUBLIC HEALTH
Dengue fever case in Tainan
Tainan on Monday reported this year’s eighth case of imported dengue fever. A 37-year-old man working in Vietnam who had returned home for the Lunar New Year holiday tested positive for the virus, Tainan Public Health Bureau Director Chen Yi (陳怡) said. The man developed a fever and felt fatigued on Feb. 1, but traveled home the following day, and took a quick blood test for dengue fever at the airport, which initially turned out negative. Nevertheless, his test was reported to the local dengue fever prevention center. On Monday last week, the Centers for Disease Control told the local center that the man did have dengue fever, and Tainan health personnel were dispatched to disinfect his residence and neighborhood the following day. People who develop a fever within 14 days of arriving in Taiwan from Southeast Asia or South Asia should get a dengue fever test, Chen said.
ASTRONOMY
Two eclipses predicted
The two most exciting celestial events in the nation this year will be a partial lunar eclipse in July and a partial solar eclipse in December, the Taipei Astronomical Museum said. The eclipse is expected to take place between 4:01am and 5:16am on July 17, when the moon reaches its closest to the center of Earth’s umbra. At the peak of the eclipse, the moon will appear copper around two-thirds of its surface, while the remainder will appear as bright as usual, museum researcher Chang Kuei-lan (張桂蘭) said. The phenomenon will be visible to the naked eye if the weather allows, she said. The partial solar eclipse is to take place on Dec. 26 and should also be visible to the naked eye, she said.
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