■ Politics
Chen aide rebuts charges
President Chen Shui-bian (陳水扁) has never received political donations from the KMT, James Huang (黃志芳), director of the Public Affairs Department of the Presiden-tial Office said Wednesday. Huang made the statement following remarks by PFP Legislator Chiou Yi (邱毅) that former president Lee Teng-hui (李登輝) contributed NT$600 million (US$17.3 million) to Chen's 2000 presidential campaign. Chiou said the money may have come from the KMT and was transmitted to Chen via Liu Tai-ying (劉泰英), former chairman of the KMT's Business Management Committee. Huang denied the accusation, stressing that Chen never obtained any political donations from the KMT, Lee or Liu. Huang called Chiou's remarks irresponsible and said they had seriously damaged Chen's reputation.
■ Health
Insurance sponsors sought
World Vision Taiwan and the Bureau of National Health Insurance have initiated a fund-raising program to help some 30,000 children who are not covered by the National Health Insurance plan, a World Vision spokes-man said yesterday. He said that while 96 percent of the population is covered by the program, there are still some 300,000 people who are left out because they are unable to pay the premiums. For a monthly donation of NT$650, a person can participate in the sponsorship program, the spokesman said.
■ Education
Students score in math test
A number of secondary school students participating in the American Mathe-matics Competition (AMC) held by the American Mathematics Association in February had scored full marks, counting for 74 percent of the total full scores around the world, the Secondary Education Association (TSEA) reported yesterday. The TSEA said 23 students had full marks out of the total 31 full-score contestants in the AMC10 category taken by high school freshmen although three of the 23 are junior high school students. A total of 5,289 students in Taiwan reached the scores of excellence -- half of all the contestants from around the world. In the AMC12 test category for high school sophomores and juniors, 1,503 students out of the total 4,804 contestants reached the level of excel-lence. These students will be be able to participate in the American Invitational Mathematics Examination on April 13.
■ Diplomacy
Rice for Iraq being loaded
The government is ready to ship 5,000 tonnes of rice in 100,000 packages for Iraqi civilians as the first batch of its humanitarian aid for that country, officials said yester-day. The rice, donated by various government and private suppliers, is being loaded at the Taichung Harbor. Loading is expected to be completed by Monday. The rice will be shipped to Jordan, where it will be delivered to Iraq with the help of inter-national humanitarian groups, they said. Each 50kg package bears the ROC flag, the officials said.
■ Reconstruction
921 work proceeding
Premier Yu Shyi-kun said yesterday that 921 recon-struction work is going smoothly, and should be completed by June next year. He made remarks while presiding over a meeting of 921 Earthquake Post Disas-ter Recovery Commission in Chung Hsing New Village in central Taiwan. Yu said the rebuilding of houses has proven to be the most difficult task.
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