EDUCATION
Schools prepare for heat
New Taipei City Mayor Hou You-yi (侯友宜) yesterday said he has asked the city’s schools to adjust their schedules for outdoor classes when temperatures exceed 36°C, to prevent students from getting sunburned. Asked whether schools would cancel lessons on days with extreme heat, Hou said there should be a central-government policy that county and municipality governments could follow. Teachers determine whether to reschedule outdoor classes based on the day’s temperature, New Taipei City Education Bureau Deputy Director Liu Ming-chao (劉明超) said. There is no policy to cancel classes based on a specific temperature, as sometimes the apparent temperature was high despite a lower measured temperature, he said. As other mayors and commissioners have expressed a desire for the Ministry of Education to establish policy on the issue, the department would bring it up at a July 21 meeting of education departments heads with the ministry.
DIPLOMACY
Representative appointed
The Ministry of Foreign Affairs on Friday said that Lou Chen-hwa (羅震華), a counselor at the Taipei Economic and Cultural Office in Saudi Arabia, is to head the Taiwan Representative Office in Somaliland. Although the east African nation is not recognized by the international community and has no official diplomatic ties, it has 22 representative offices, and Canada, Denmark, Djibouti, Ethiopia, the EU, Turkey, the UK and the UN have established representative agencies there. Taiwan on Wednesday announced that it and Somaliland in February had agreed to establish representative offices in their respective nations. Once the offices are set up, the two sides would cooperate in agriculture, mining, fishing, energy, public health, education and information technology, the ministry said.
NATIONAL DEFENSE
Surge caused capsizing
An unexpected wave surge on Friday caused a vessel to capsize, critically injuring three soldiers during a navy landing drill, the military said yesterday, citing the initial findings of an investigation. A craft with seven Republic of China Marine Corps 99th Brigade personnel aboard at about 9am overturned off Zuoying District’s (左營) Taoziyuan (桃子園) beach in Kaohsiung. As of yesterday, three of the soldiers were in intensive care units with pulmonary edema, a condition caused by an abnormal amount of fluid in the lungs, the navy said. The navy is looking at ways to prevent similar incidents and to improve safety during training exercises, the Navy Command said. All seven soldiers are experienced and elite combatants, the navy said.
SOCIETY
Former politician dies
Former Examination Yuan president Chiu Chuang-huan (邱創煥) on Thursday died at the age of 94, his daughter Chiu Pei-lin (邱珮琳) said. Chiu Chuang-huan was one of many young Taiwanese politicians recruited into the then-Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) and local government in the 1970s and 1980s under a policy initiated by then-president Chiang Ching-kuo (蔣經國) to promote more Taiwanese to high-profile government posts. Chiu was born on July 25, 1925, in Changhua County. He held many government and party posts, including minister of the interior, vice premier, senior adviser to the president, Examination Yuan president, Taiwan provincial governor and KMT vice chairman. On Feb. 11, he was admitted to a hospital with pneumonia and died at his home on Thursday, his daughter said.
TRAGEDY: An expert said that the incident was uncommon as the chance of a ground crew member being sucked into an IDF engine was ‘minuscule’ A master sergeant yesterday morning died after she was sucked into an engine during a routine inspection of a fighter jet at an air base in Taichung, the Air Force Command Headquarters said. The officer, surnamed Hu (胡), was conducting final landing checks at Ching Chuan Kang (清泉崗) Air Base when she was pulled into the jet’s engine for unknown reasons, the air force said in a news release. She was transported to a hospital for emergency treatment, but could not be revived, it said. The air force expressed its deepest sympathies over the incident, and vowed to work with authorities as they
A tourist who was struck and injured by a train in a scenic area of New Taipei City’s Pingsi District (平溪) on Monday might be fined for trespassing on the tracks, the Railway Police Bureau said yesterday. The New Taipei City Fire Department said it received a call at 4:37pm on Monday about an incident in Shifen (十分), a tourist destination on the Pingsi Railway Line. After arriving on the scene, paramedics treated a woman in her 30s for a 3cm to 5cm laceration on her head, the department said. She was taken to a hospital in Keelung, it said. Surveillance footage from a
Police have issued warnings against traveling to Cambodia or Thailand when others have paid for the travel fare in light of increasing cases of teenagers, middle-aged and elderly people being tricked into traveling to these countries and then being held for ransom. Recounting their ordeal, one victim on Monday said she was asked by a friend to visit Thailand and help set up a bank account there, for which they would be paid NT$70,000 to NT$100,000 (US$2,136 to US$3,051). The victim said she had not found it strange that her friend was not coming along on the trip, adding that when she
INFRASTRUCTURE: Work on the second segment, from Kaohsiung to Pingtung, is expected to begin in 2028 and be completed by 2039, the railway bureau said Planned high-speed rail (HSR) extensions would blanket Taiwan proper in four 90-minute commute blocs to facilitate regional economic and livelihood integration, Railway Bureau Deputy Director-General Yang Cheng-chun (楊正君) said in an interview published yesterday. A project to extend the high-speed rail from Zuoying Station in Kaohsiung to Pingtung County’s Lioukuaicuo Township (六塊厝) is the first part of the bureau’s greater plan to expand rail coverage, he told the Liberty Times (sister paper of the Taipei Times). The bureau’s long-term plan is to build a loop to circle Taiwan proper that would consist of four sections running from Taipei to Hualien, Hualien to
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