■ Politics
Opposition reveals plans
The opposition Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) and the People First Party (PFP) will come up with a concrete national rejuvenation plan soon to counter President Chen Shui-bian's "new constitution" initiative, a PFP official said yesterday. "We are working on a comprehensive blueprint for government restructuring and national development with a view to resolving a host of problems once and for all," said Chang Hsien-yao (張顯耀), director of the PFP's policy research center. Meanwhile, sources close to the pan-blue alliance said that the alliance's constitutional-reform agenda will focus on legislative reform. "If KMT Chairmen Lien Chan (連戰), who represents the pan-blue alliance to challege President Chen, wins the election next year, he will announce that he will immediately activate a constitutional reform process to greatly reduce the number of seast in the Legislative Yuan to 100 from the current 225 to enhance legislative efficiency," the sources said. Most notable in the "pan-blue alliance" reform plan is that it recommends a "single seat, two votes" legislative electoral system which requires the winner to garner more than half of the vote.
■ Diplomacy
Governor to get award
An Alaskan trade mission, led by governor Frank Murkowski, arrived in Taipei yesterday for a four-day visit. Murkowski and members of the trade mission were greeted at the airport by Joseph Wu (吳釗燮), deputy secretary-general of the Presidential Office, and Victor Chin, director-general of the Department of North American Affairs of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. According to a press release from the Alaska State Government, Murkowski will receive an award in Taipei on Monday afternoon. President Chen Shui-bian (陳水扁) will present Murkowski with the "Order of Propitious Clouds with Grand Cordon" for his many years of support and contributions to Taiwan.
■ Foreign affairs
Taiwan scandalized
A government minister threatened to sue a Costa Rican vice president over accusations surrounding illegal foreign funding of President Abel Pacheco's campaign for office. "I am examining legal action against Luis Fishman," Ricardo Toledo said. Thursday, Fishman told a congressional committee that Toledo had arranged contacts between the campaign and Taiwan, which gave US$300,000 to Pacheco's campaign. "It is awful that Luis tried to implicate me in something like that and moreover involve a foreign government without proof," Toledo said. A special commission discovered secret accounts with deposits of up to US$500,000 from two Taiwanese companies transfered from the Taiwan-based International Commercial Bank of China.
■ Economy
China is a threat
Taiwan needs to develop a knowledge-based economy so that it is not easily outpaced in global economic competition, the head of a local think tank said yesterday. Chen Po-chih (陳博志), chairman of Taiwan Thinktank, made the remarks at a seminar sponsored by the Taiwan Economic Association on the effects of cross-strait trade on the development of Taiwan's economy and industrial structure. Chen said that because of increased cross-strait trade and investment, Taiwan's wages and prices have drifted down towards the level of China, adding that the effect is especially evident in the labor wages of the manufacturing sector.
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