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.
A tropical depression east of the Philippines became a tropical storm early yesterday, the Central Weather Administration (CWA) said, less than a week after a typhoon barreled across the nation. The agency issued an advisory at 3:30am stating that the 22nd tropical storm, named Yinxing, of the Pacific typhoon season formed at 2am. As of 8am, the storm was 1,730km southeast of Oluanpi (鵝鑾鼻), Taiwan’s southernmost point, with a 100km radius. It was moving west-northwest at 32kph, with maximum sustained winds of 83kph and gusts of up to 108kph. Based on its current path, the storm is not expected to hit Taiwan, CWA
Residents have called on the Taipei City Government to reconsider its plan to demolish a four-decades-old pedestrian overpass near Daan Forest Park. The 42-year-old concrete and steel structure that serves as an elevated walkway over the intersection of Heping and Xinsheng roads is to be closed on Tuesday in preparation for demolition slated for completion by the end of the month. However, in recent days some local residents have been protesting the planned destruction of the intersection overpass that is rendered more poetically as “sky bridge” in Chinese. “This bridge carries the community’s collective memory,” said a man surnamed Chuang
A tropical depression east of the Philippines became a tropical storm earlier today, the Central Weather Administration (CWA) said. The 22nd tropical storm, named Yinxing, in this year's Pacific typhoon season formed at 2am, the CWA said. As of 8am, the storm was 1,730km southeast of Oluanpi (鵝鑾鼻) with a 100km radius, it said. It was moving west-northwest at 32kph, with maximum sustained winds of 83kph and gusts of up to 108kph. Based on its current path, the storm is not expected to hit Taiwan, CWA meteorologist Huang En-hung (黃恩宏) said. However, a more accurate forecast would be made on Wednesday, when Yinxing is
NEW DESTINATIONS: Marketing campaigns to attract foreign travelers have to change from the usual promotions about Alishan and Taroko Gorge, the transport minister said The number of international tourists visiting Taiwan is estimated to top 8 million by the end of this year, Minister of Transportation and Communications Chen Shi-kai (陳世凱) said yesterday, adding that the ministry has not changed its goal of attracting 10 million foreign travelers this year. Chen made the remarks at a meeting of the legislature’s Transportation Committee to brief lawmakers about the ministry’s plan to boost foreign visitor arrivals. Last month, Chen told the committee that the nation might attract only 7.5 million tourists from overseas this year and that when the ministry sets next year’s goal, it would not include