■ Politics
Control Yuan to probe Chiou
People First Party (PFP) legislators yesterday demanded the Control Yuan investigate Presidential Office Secretary-General Chiou I-jen's (邱義仁) upgrading of
the nation's security status, saying it was not within his power. The Control Yuan agreed to investigate the matter, and is considering doing so in tandem with an investigation into the shooting of President Chen Shui-bian (陳水扁) and Vice President Annette Lu (呂秀蓮). PFP caucus whip Hsieh Chang-chieh (謝章捷) said that Chiou acted after the shooting took place, but that later on even the National Security Bureau did not know what the "mechanism" was. Hsieh said Chiou seemed to have done something that was not within his jurisdiction. The Control Yuan has formed a task force
to investigate the shooting, whether the security agencies made mistakes protecting the national leadership and the Presidential Office's response to the crisis.
■ Society
Red Cross hires Hau
Former Environmental Protection Administration (EPA) chief Hau Lung-bin (郝龍斌) yesterday confirmed he was accepting the position of secretary-general at the national headquarters of
the Red Cross Society of
the Republic of China. Hau resigned as EPA head last October after disagreements over whether or not advisory referendums on construction projects should be considered after environmental impact assessments had been conducted. Hau had
stressed the importance of professionalism in the face
of wavering public opinion.
Hau yesterday said that after quitting his government
post, he had still wanted to contribute to the community. He will start on Monday.
■ Society
More lose citizenship
A total of 869 people lost their Republic of China citizenship last year, up 6.7 percent from the 2002 figure, according
to statistics released by
the Ministry of the Interior yesterday. Most of those
who lost their citizenship
did so as a result of acquiring citizenship in another Asian country, the figures showed. A total of 479 people were naturalized as Japanese,
106 became South Korean nationals and 83 became Singaporean citizens. A further 69 were naturalized
as Germans and 51 became Americans. By gender,
334 of those who lost their citizenship last year were male and 535 were female. On why people lost their citizenship, 533 did so to
gain citizenship in another country, 225 did so to
be naturalized in another country through marriage and 105 were naturalized
in another country together with their parents.
■ Legislation
Merger law amended
Amendments to the Company Merger Law (企業併購法) loosening restrictions on mergers were passed in the legislature yesterday. The amendments allow enterprises to acquire just one department of another company before merging. The amendment also adds articles to the law to allow companies to merge subsidiaries more easily: If
a parent company wants
to merge a subsidiary --
90 percent of the capital
of which is owned by the parent company -- then the parent company need only secure agreement from
its board instead of from shareholders. It was also agreed at yesterday's sitting that the Judicial Yuan's budget would be unfrozen. But blue-camp legislators also recommended that officials
in the Executive Yuan and
the Directorate-General of Budget, Accounting and Statistics be investigated by the Control Yuan.
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
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
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