■Politics
Pro-China march tomorrow
A demonstration sponsored by the Alliance for the Unification of China and eight other organizations, is scheduled to take place tomorrow. An organizer of the event said that about 10,000 people are expected to march from Chiang Kai-shek Memorial Hall to Ta An Forest Park. On the way, they will chant such slogans as "We want jobs, not unemployment," "We want welfare, not military procurement" and "Save Taiwan, oppose Taiwan independence," the organizer said.
■ Labor
Illegal workers arrested
Six Bangladeshis were arrested yesterday in Luchow, Taipei County, for working without a permit. A police officer in Luchow said the six will be deported and their employers fined. All six came to Taiwan in 1998 on tourist visas and then overstayed. Taipei police found 18 people from the Middle East and Africa overstaying their visas or working without permits last month, including 10 from Bangladesh, five from India and one each from Lebanon, South Africa and Liberia.
■ Defense
Compulsory service term cut
President Chen Shui-bian (陳水扁) announced yesterday that the mandatory military service period will be shortened by two months, beginning Jan. 1. Chen said the new rule will not apply to his son, Chen Chih-chung (陳致中), who is performing his two-year military service and is set to complete it on Dec. 31. Chen made the remarks during an inspection tour of the Army Artillery Command stationed on Kinmen. Military service has been mandatory for every able-bodied adult male citizen since the ROC government relocated to Taiwan in 1949. Since becoming president, Chen has made many inspection tours of Kinmen, which is located just 2.4km from Xiamen, China.
■ Immigration
Illegal immigrants nabbed
Officials from the Coast Guard Administration's southern Taiwan operations yesterday arrested five Chinese women who had sneaked into the country to engage in the sex trade. Acting on a tip, the coast guard officers and Tainan City police made a pre-dawn raid on an apartment in Chiayi City and found the women. According to the women, they had arrived separately through arrangements made by a "snakehead" ring based in Chiayi. The women said they had been in Taiwan between a few days and two months. The Coast Guard Administration said it will will continue to cooperate with police forces in carrying out "Operation Chenhai" aimed at curbing cross-strait human trafficking and maintaining social order.
■ National identity
Voters split on relationship
Voters are equally split about how the nation's tense and complicated relationship with China should be described, a newspaper poll said yesterday. Pollsters reported that 30 percent of voters agree with President Chen Shui-bian's (陳水扁) view that China and Taiwan are separate countries, a Chinese-language newspaper said. But another 30 percent agreed with the KMT-PFP view: Taiwan and the mainland are part of one China, but each side has different definitions of what the country is, the paper said. The remaining voters did not have an opinion or didn't respond to the question. The nation's political status will be one of the major issues in next March's presidential election.
Agencies
FLU SEASON: Twenty-six severe cases were reported from Tuesday last week to Monday, including a seven-year-old girl diagnosed with influenza-associated encephalopathy Nearly 140,000 people sought medical assistance for diarrhea last week, the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) said on Tuesday. From April 7 to Saturday last week, 139,848 people sought medical help for diarrhea-related illness, a 15.7 percent increase from last week’s 120,868 reports, CDC Epidemic Intelligence Center Deputy Director Lee Chia-lin (李佳琳) said. The number of people who reported diarrhea-related illness last week was the fourth highest in the same time period over the past decade, Lee said. Over the past four weeks, 203 mass illness cases had been reported, nearly four times higher than the 54 cases documented in the same period
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:
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
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