SOCIETY
EATC chair killed in crash
Executive Aviation Taiwan Corp (EATC) chairman Philip Yang (楊宿智) on Tuesday died in a helicopter crash in the US, the company said yesterday. Yang, 61, owned three original equipment manufacturers of electronic devices in China, EATC’s Web site says. He began learning to fly at the age of 40, then received seven aviation certificates in four years and flew his private airplane around the world four times. Established in 2010, EATC is the only aviation company in Asia that offers emergency air medical assistance with its own fleet. In 2017, EATC inked a contract with the Ministry of Health and Welfare to provide air ambulance services for Penghu, Kinmen and Lienchiang counties, a project that was launched in August last year.
EDUCATION
NTU ranked 69th in world
British education network Quacquarelli Symonds (QS) ranked National Taiwan University (NTU) 69th in the world, up three notches from last year, in its annual ranking released on Wednesday. Sixteen Taiwanese universities are in the QS World University Rankings 2020, with NTU the only one to rank in the top 100. National Cheng Kung University saw the biggest improvement, rising nine notches to 225th and replacing National Chiao Tung University (227th) as the third-best Taiwanese school. National Tsing Hua University (173rd) is listed as the second-best. The rankings evaluate six metrics: academic reputation, employer reputation, faculty/student ratio, citations per faculty, international faculty ratio and international student ratio. Forty percent of the overall score is assigned to academic reputation. The Massachusetts Institute of Technology retained the top spot for the eighth consecutive year, followed by Stanford University, Harvard University and the University of Oxford.
ENTERTAINMENT
Director wins monthly award
The Oniros Film Awards (OFA) has named Charles Yang (楊孟嘉) best director for last month, according to the organization’s Web site. Yang won the monthly prize for his work on the film Lethe about a fugitive murderer who encounters his daughter at a drug party working as a prostitute. Yang, who also wrote the screenplay, said that he interviewed several fugitives and prostitutes, and researched the life story of a young fashion model who was murdered at a drug party at an upscale hotel in Taiwan in 2016. The OFA is an IMDb qualifying competition based in Italy that awards filmmakers every month. All the winners automatically qualify for the OFA’s “Best of Year” competition and have a chance to win the Annual Finals, which are to be held in August at the Palais Theater in Saint-Vincent, Italy, the Web site says.
ENVIRONMENT
New rules on nitrogen oxide
Regulations aimed at reducing nitrogen oxide emissions to 4,000 tonnes per year in areas that do not meet air quality standards are to be introduced by July 31, the Environmental Protection Administration (EPA) said on Wednesday. Priority would be given to regulating entities that emit more than 40 tonnes of nitrogen oxide per year, including those in the power, cement, steel and waste incineration industries, it said. Factories would be given five years to comply. The public is invited to make comments and suggestions over the next two weeks, the agency said. The nation in 2015 emitted more than 430,000 tonnes of nitrogen oxide, government figures showed.
China might accelerate its strategic actions toward Taiwan, the South China Sea and across the first island chain, after the US officially entered a military conflict with Iran, as Beijing would perceive Washington as incapable of fighting a two-front war, a military expert said yesterday. The US’ ongoing conflict with Iran is not merely an act of retaliation or a “delaying tactic,” but a strategic military campaign aimed at dismantling Tehran’s nuclear capabilities and reshaping the regional order in the Middle East, said National Defense University distinguished adjunct lecturer Holmes Liao (廖宏祥), former McDonnell Douglas Aerospace representative in Taiwan. If
TO BE APPEALED: The environment ministry said coal reduction goals had to be reached within two months, which was against the principle of legitimate expectation The Taipei High Administrative Court on Thursday ruled in favor of the Taichung Environmental Protection Bureau in its administrative litigation against the Ministry of Environment for the rescission of a NT$18 million fine (US$609,570) imposed by the bureau on the Taichung Power Plant in 2019 for alleged excess coal power generation. The bureau in November 2019 revised what it said was a “slip of the pen” in the text of the operating permit granted to the plant — which is run by Taiwan Power Co (Taipower) — in October 2017. The permit originally read: “reduce coal use by 40 percent from Jan.
‘SPEY’ REACTION: Beijing said its Eastern Theater Command ‘organized troops to monitor and guard the entire process’ of a Taiwan Strait transit China sent 74 warplanes toward Taiwan between late Thursday and early yesterday, 61 of which crossed the median line in the Taiwan Strait. It was not clear why so many planes were scrambled, said the Ministry of National Defense, which tabulated the flights. The aircraft were sent in two separate tranches, the ministry said. The Ministry of Foreign Affairs on Thursday “confirmed and welcomed” a transit by the British Royal Navy’s HMS Spey, a River-class offshore patrol vessel, through the Taiwan Strait a day earlier. The ship’s transit “once again [reaffirmed the Strait’s] status as international waters,” the foreign ministry said. “Such transits by
Taiwan is doing everything it can to prevent a military conflict with China, including building up asymmetric defense capabilities and fortifying public resilience, Vice President Hsiao Bi-khim (蕭美琴) said in a recent interview. “Everything we are doing is to prevent a conflict from happening, whether it is 2027 or before that or beyond that,” Hsiao told American podcaster Shawn Ryan of the Shawn Ryan Show. She was referring to a timeline cited by several US military and intelligence officials, who said Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) had instructed the Chinese People’s Liberation Army to be ready to take military action against Taiwan
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