■ Diplomacy
Mori heads home
Former Japanese prime minister Yoshiro Mori left Taiwan yesterday afternoon after wrapping up a three-day private visit. Although no longer in power, Mori is still considered one of the few political heavyweights in Japan. He was the Japanese prime minister who granted a visa to former president Lee Teng-hui (李登輝) in 2001 allowing him to receive medical treatment in spite of strong opposition from Beijing. Political analysts said Mori's visit was expected to strengthen Taiwan-Japan ties in the lack of official relations. During Mori's stay in Taipei, he met with several important political figures, including President Chen Shui-bian (陳水扁) and Lee.
■ Finance
Tax cut to be extended
Taiwan's legislators plan to extend by a year a two-year capital gains tax cut on land sales to boost home sales, the Commercial Times reported, citing Chiu Tai-san (邱太三), a Democratic Progressive Party legislator.
Legislators plan to pass a bill as early as Tuesday allowing the government to maintain the capital-gains tax at between 20 and 30 percent, the report said.
The tax cut boosted property trading after it was implemented in February last year, the report said. Taiwan's government collected about NT$60 billion in capital-gains taxes on land sales last year, up from NT$42 billion in 2001, the paper reported.
The cut was introduced in a bid to help spur the sale of 1.2 million excess homes built during a real estate boom in the 1980s and 1990s.
■ Trade
Produce exhibition held
A two-day exhibition of Taiwan's high-quality agricultural products was launched yesterday in Tainan, with domestic and overseas buyers attending. The exhibition, organized by the China External Trade Development Council (CETRA) at the commission of the Council of Agriculture, is aimed at promoting the sale of Taiwan's agricultural products both in local and foreign markets. According to CETRA, foreign buyers attending the exhibition came mainly from South Korea, Malaysia, Hong Kong and Macau. As the government has attached much importance to such product-promotion activities, President Chen Shui-bian will be invited today to attend the exhibition, where more than 1,000 farm, livestock and marine products will be exhibited.
■ Airlines
Dragonair to buy a freighter
Hong Kong Dragon Airlines Ltd will buy a second-hand Boeing 747 freighter from Taiwan, the Standard said, citing the company's chief executive, Stanley Hui.
The carrier chose a 1989 Boeing 747-200F cargo plane, which was put up for sale by the Central Trust of China, a Taiwan government agency set up to handle public procurement, the newspaper said. Dragonair could pay between US$22.6 million and US$30 million for the freighter, it said.
The second-hand freighter, which is China Airlines' only remaining 747-200 freighter, will join Dragonair's freighter fleet as early as the end of next month, the Standard said. China Airlines is Taiwan's largest carrier. Dragonair, the city's second-largest carrier, said in May it may add as many as 10 Boeing freighters in the next five years as it seeks to boost revenue from carrying cargo resulting from increased trade with China. The carrier already owns three Boeing 747-300 freight-carrying planes.
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