TRAFFIC
Scooter exams expanded
People with vehicle licenses who wish to obtain a scooter license would from May 3 no longer be allowed to skip the written test, the Directorate-General of Highways announced on Thursday. The regulation also applies to light and heavy motorcycles, it said. Currently, holders of vehicle licenses can skip the written test and obtain a scooter license after a road test, which is usually conducted on a closed road. They were exempted because the questions in the tests for different licenses are similar, the agency said. The level of difficulty for scooter exams has also been raised, as part of the government’s effort to reduce motorcycle crashes, it said, adding that more situational questions have been added to differentiate the exam from other licensing tests. About 260,000 people apply for scooter licenses in Taiwan every year, and 50,000 of them already hold other licenses, agency statistics showed.
CULTURE
Ang Lee to get fellowship
Film director Ang Lee (李安) is to become the third Asian ever to receive a fellowship at the British Academy Film Awards tomorrow, the British Academy of Film and Television Arts (BAFTA) announced on Tuesday. “Lee is one of the world’s most pioneering and revered contemporary filmmakers whose groundbreaking films are highly acclaimed spanning multiple genres throughout his producing, writing and directing career,” the academy said on its Web site. Lee has won several BAFTA awards for his movies Sense and Sensibility; Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon; and Brokeback Mountain. He also won the award in the best director category at the Oscars for Brokeback Mountain and Life of Pi. Lee said that “it’s a tremendous honor to receive the BAFTA Academy Fellowship and be counted among such brilliant filmmakers,” who have previously been awarded the fellowship.
SOCIETY
Agency promotes trails
The Forestry Bureau has selected three of the about 130 trails it operates — the Cypress Forest Trail in the Taipingshan (太平山) area, the Tefuye Historic Trail in the Alishan (阿里山) area and the Nenggao Cross-Ridge Old Trail in Taroko National Park (太魯閣國家公園) — for special promotion, the bureau said at an event last week. “These trails are unique and represent different challenges, which we think will meet the interests of different hikers,” bureau General Secretary Lin Hao-chen (林澔貞) said. Some other remarkable trails are eco-craft trails, which are built with on-site materials and maintained using techniques that minimize effects on the environment, she added. The Taiwan Thousand Miles Trail Association, which shared its knowledge of local eco-craft trails with bureau officials, said it would work with the bureau to promote the techniques in other countries.
DEFENSE
Navy expects gun system
The navy expects the delivery of 13 sets of the MK15 Block 1B Phalanx advanced radar-controlled gun system from the US in the first half of this year, military sources said on Thursday, citing a delivery notification. The guns would be mounted on ships that are mostly equipped with the outdated Block 1A Phalanx systems, the sources said. The Ministry of National Defense has said that the new system is for short-range defense against small ships or missiles. It features a 20mm cannon with a rotating cluster of six barrels that can fire 4,500 rounds per minute and has a range of 1.5km. It is also equipped with radar and an infrared sensor.
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
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
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