■Embezzlement
Lee will be left alone
The Taipei Prosecutors' Office said yesterday that no specific individual is being targeted by prosecutors in the investigation over suspected misconduct by Liu Tai-ying (劉泰英), chairman of the China Development Industrial Bank. Liu is being prosecuted for embezzlement, breach of trust, violating the Securities Transaction Law, corruption, document forgery and violating the Corporation Law when he was chairman of the KMT's Business Management Committee between 1993 and 2000. A prosecutor dismissed a report by local news media that the prosecutors' office is planning to arrange an interview with former president Lee Teng-hui (李登輝) to learn about Liu's functions in the party from the former party chairman. Meanwhile, prosecutors will not rule out the possibility of appealing again for a re-examination of Liu's case as Liu's unconditional release on Tuesday was considered unacceptable by prosecutors.
■ Air crash
Ship sent to get black boxes
A marine salvaging company will send a ship to Taiwan from Singapore next Monday to help retrieve the black boxes and wreckage of a cargo plane of Taiwan's TransAsia Airways which crashed into the Taiwan Strait last month, the Aviation Safety Council (ASC) said yesterday. The cargo plane crashed into the sea off Makung, Penghu, Dec. 21 en route to Macau and its two pilots remain missing. Though military vessels have helped to detect the signals of the black boxes, rescuers have been unable to pinpoint the exact location because of rough seas and strong currents.
■ Compensation
228 victims may get a break
The Legislative Yuan's Home and Nations Committee yesterday passed the first reading of the draft amendment to the Statute of 228 Incident Compensation extending the time period for applying for compensation from the current five years to seven years. After the time period for applications had expired on Nov. 6 last year, legislators led by Huang Chong-yuan (黃宗源) yesterday submitted the proposal to the legislature to ensure that some victims of the incident won't miss the opportunity to receive compensation. If the amendment passes the second and third readings, victims of the incident who had failed to apply for compensation would be entitled to do so before the end of this year.
■ Nuclear waste
Ministry to talk to islanders
The Ministry of Economic Affairs (MOEA) said yesterday it will meet with representatives of Tao Aborigines before Jan. 15 to discuss issues regarding the relocation of a temporary nuclear-waste repository on Lanyu, known in English as Orchid Island. "The ministry is willing to discuss the issue with the Lanyu tribal council and representatives of all Lanyu residents to seek a consensus on the removal of low-grade radioactive waste from the scenic island," Minister of Economic Affairs Lin Yi-fu (林義夫) said at a news conference. Noting that the government respects the opinion of the Tao people and will not permanently store nuclear waste on their homeland, Lin said the ministry has signed a document pledging to exclude Lanyu from a list of possible sites for building a permanent nuclear-waste dump. Lin further said the Cabinet has passed a draft bill outlining legal proceedings to ensure professionalism and information transparency when choosing permanent nuclear-dump sites for low-grade radioactive waste.
Agencies
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