■Health
Singapore sends gifts
Singapore yesterday gave Taiwan large quantities of medical supplies to help it control the spread of SARS. The gift included 100,000 N95 masks, surgical masks, and protective clothing, as well as 15 boxes of chemical agents for testing for the SARS virus. Two Singapore-developed infrared human temperature monitors were loaned to Taiwan. A group of technicians will be sent to Taipei to help operate the monitors. The medical supplies and equipment will be brought to Taipei today China Airlines free of charge.
■ Politics
Lee challenges KMT stance
Former president Lee Teng-hui (李登輝) said yesterday that the nation's democratization over the past 15 years has been in accordance with his predecessor Chiang Ching-kuo's (蔣經國) policies. Lee also accused the KMT's current leadership of going against Chiang's policy direction. Lee said Chiang decided a few years before his death to "localize" the KMT government by appointing more Taiwanese to high-level positions. Lee also added that Chiang asked him when he was vice president to carry out the policy.
■ Poltics
Hualien faces by-election
Both the pan-green and the pan-blue camps are gearing up vying for the vacant Hualien County magistrate post after the KMT incumbent, Chang fu-hsiung (張福興), died of lung cancer Sunday night. By law, a by-election must be held in the next three months to elect a new magistrate. Chang, 61, had been hospitalized at National Taiwan University Hospital but was rushed home Sunday after the hospital said his condition was critical.
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