■Politics
Widow may contest seat
Liu Chao-eh (劉詔娥), widow of the late KMT Hualien County commissioner Chang Fu-hsiung (張福興), might run in the Hualien County commissioner by-election as an independent candidate. Failing to secure the KMT-PFP alliance's nomination for candidacy in the by-election, Liu said she would hold a press conference today to announce her decision. The by-election is slated to be held in August. Meanwhile, Chi Shu-ing(齊淑英), representing the Green Party, was the first person among all party candidates to pick up the registration form yesterday on the first day of registration.
■ Politics
KMT backs extra session
The KMT called on its lawmakers yesterday to endorse a request by the DPP for a special legislative session. In a turnaround from the party's earlier resistance to an extra session, KMT Legislator Lee Chia-chin (李嘉進), the deputy secretary-general of the KMT caucus at the Legislative Yuan, said his caucus will call on all 66 of the party's lawmakers today to endorse the DPP request. However, Lee went on, during the special session, the KMT will request the enactment of a draft bill for plebiscite presented by DPP Legislator Trong Chai (蔡同榮) in addition to the six financial and economic bills for which the DPP requests the extra session.
■ Health
Zero SARS cases reported
Health officials reported no new SARS infections or deaths yesterday for the 23rd consecutive day since the last patient was quarantined. A total of 678 people have contracted SARS in Taiwan and 84 people have died, according to the Center for Disease Control. Health officials have said they expect Taiwan will be removed from the World Health Organization's list of SARS-affected areas this week.
■ Politics
TSU supports plebiscite
The TSU supports the notion of holding referendums on major public issues and will push for a public vote to cut the number of legislators by half, a TSU spokeswoman said yesterday. Chien Lin Whei-chun (錢林慧君), a TSU party whip at the Legislative Yuan, said the TSU will push for the first referendum to be on the issue of downsizing the legislature to "respond to the will of the voters." The TSU will first initiate an endorsement campaign -- collecting signatures from the private sector nationwide on the issue of halving the number of legislators -- to pave the way for the holding of the first referendum on the issue, Chien Lin said.
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