■ Crime
Bomber strikes again
Taiwan's "rice bomber" has apparently struck again, this time fashioning an explosive device using a tea pot and placing it in the men's toilet at Yucheng Park in Taipei, police said yesterday. This is the sixth time over the past two months that an explosive device has been found bearing similar characteristics: a typed note saying "oppose rice imports," and a warning that the object was in fact an explosive device. Local media have dubbed the devices "rice bombs." The previous ones were found in city parks, MRT stations, and outside a government building. Police said that the cycle of the "rice bomber" for each act is about 10 to 14 days, invariably in Taipei. The protest against rice imports are obviously a ploy to draw media attention, they said. Police have not revealed if the devices were armed.
■ Finance
Debt worries PFP legislator
People First Party (PFP) Legislator Lee Tung-hao (李桐豪) said yesterday that he and eight other legislators have jointly introduced a bill governing public debt and budgets because the central government's debt is increasing at an alarming rate. Lee said at a news conference that the central government's debt has already increased to NT$3.98 trillion (US$116.6 billion), and is increasing at a speed of NT$1.2 billion per day. It will break the NT$4 trillion mark early next year. The total debt of central and local governments has reached NT$4.7 trillion. He said it is necessary to control government debt by legislation because a high debt can dampen economic development and blunt the nation's competitive edge. More than 70 legislators have endorsed the bill, he added.
■ Society
Human-rights law demanded
Members of several homosexual groups and human-rights activists organizations urged the government yesterday to come up with a timetable for the enactment of a basic human-rights law, which will also protect the rights of gays and lesbians. The groups lodged their appeal in front of the headquarters of the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP), calling for concrete and effective measures to be taken by the government to facilitate legislation of a basic human-rights law.
■ Diplomacy
Ex-Japanese PM to visit
Former Japanese Prime Minister Yoshiro Mori is scheduled to arrive in Taiwan tomorrow for a three-day private visit, a Japanese daily reported yesterday. Mori, who was prime minister between April 2000 and April 2001, told reporters in Tokyo on Monday that his upcoming Taiwan visit would be purely private in nature. The itinerary will include a visit to an old friend of his late father and rendezvous with people in Taiwan's sports and economics circles, the Asahi Shimbun quoted Mori as saying.
■ Elderly
Pension changes approved
The Legislative Yuan yesterday gave the go-ahead to a proposed addition to a government budget on pensions. The legislature approved the additional budget of NT$3.79 billion for an amendment to pension regulations. The amendment had been passed by the legislature and put pensions for former manual workers in line with retired teachers, soldiers and civil servants. "The budgetary approval means that 210,000 former workers will receive their pensions retroactive from July before the Chinese New Year," Democratic Progressive Party Legislator Lai Ching-te (賴清德) 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