■Customs
New passport to be issued
Taipei resident Kuo Yi-ming (郭怡銘) will get the coveted first copy of the nation's new passport to be issued Sept. 1, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs announced yesterday. The ministry's Bureau of Consular Affairs conducted a random, computerized draw yesterday to decide who will get the first 100 new passports. Kuo was one of 3,017 people who had filed applications for the new passports between Aug. 1 and Thursday. Kuo said he was excited to hear he would get the very first new passport. "It came as a surprise to me. I'm more than happy," he said by phone. The new version of the passport will have the word "Taiwan," in addition to the name Republic of China on its cover.
■ Health
Officials hope for SARS test
The Department of Health hopes that a system for diagnosing SARS within three hours will be established in early October, an official said yesterday. Center for Disease Control Director General Su Yi-jen (蘇益仁) said a new diagnostic system will be useful in distinguishing cases of SARS from the flu, especially in the autumn, when approximately 1 million people in the country suffer from colds and flu each year. Research is being done at home and abroad to make an early establishment of the system possible, he said. The government will encourage people to stay at home for three days when they have cold symptoms or those of the flu. They should, however, seek medical treatment if they have symptoms of pneumonia or have difficulty in breathing.
■ Education
Seven win scholarship
The American Chamber of Commerce in Taipei (AmCham) and the Strategic Executive Search Group (SES) yesterday announced the latest winners of the AmCham/SES Scholarship for high-school students. The scholarship was established to provide gifted students from financially challenged families a chance to reach their true academic and leadership potential. This year's winners are Tsang Chia-fen, Hsiao Hung-wei, Lan Ling-erh, Chiu Yu-chen, Wang Jen-hua, Chang Chiu-fu, and Kuo Ping-jang. The scholarship will pay the tuition fees for the seven students for the rest of their high-school years.
■ Utilities
Taipower says don't fret
The Taiwan Power Company (Taipower) instructed its departments yesterday to ensure a sufficient and safe supply of electricity following a power outage that struck cities in northern US and Canada Thursday. Taiwan also suffered a massive blackout that darkened almost the entire island on July 29, 1999. The power outage was caused by the collapse of a transmission tower in Tainan County, as a result of a landslide due to heavy rainfall in the region. Taipower spokesman Lee Ching-tien (李錦田) said yesterday that the reserve capacity of the nation's electricity supply system has reached 14.7 percent this year, a considerable improvement over last year. Lee said there will be no shortage of electricity supply this summer, as long as no natural disasters hit the country.
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