■ Judiciary
Recount date set
The Taiwan High Court decided yesterday that the recount of all the presi-dential election ballots will be held on May 10 . The closed-door hearing was the third one for the law-suit filed by the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT)-People First Party (PFP) alliance seeking to suspend the win by President Chen Shui-bian (陳水扁) and Vice President Annette Lu's (呂秀蓮). Lawyers for both sides were invited to discuss more details about the recount. According to Chen and Lu's defense counsel Wellington Koo (顧立雄), the major disagree-ments are: who should be authorized to recognize a controversial ballot and who should pay for the recount, which has been estimated to cost around NT$60 million. Neither question was resolved yesterday. However, both sides eventually agreed that the recount should begin
on May 10. The court said that more hearings will be held to resolved the other issues before the recount can be carried out.
■ Diplomacy
Lu to go to El Salvador
Vice President Lu will travel to El Salvador to attend the inauguration of president-elect Antonio Saca on June 1, Ministry of Foreign Affairs spokesman Richard Shih (石瑞琦) said yesterday. He made the announcement after President Chen issued a decree on Lu's appoint-ment as his envoy. Shih said the ministry has already begun preparations for
the delegation that will accompany Lu to El Salvador. Meanwhile, in other diplomatic develop-ments, senior presidential adviser Koo Kuan-min (辜寬敏) will participate in the 25th founding anni-versary of the Republic of the Marshall Islands on May 1 on behalf of the president, Shih said.
■ Diplomacy
Siew off to China
Presidential economic adviser Vincent Siew (蕭萬長) is to visit China later this week for a regional eco-nomic forum, an official from his office said yester-day. Siew will take part in the Boao Forum for Asia to be held in Hainan Pro-vince Saturday and Sunday as chairman of the privately-run Cross-Straits Common Market Foundation, the group's chief executive officer Douglas Hung (洪讀) said. Chinese President Hu Jintao (胡錦濤) is expected to speak at the forum's opening ceremony, Hung said, but added Siew has not planned any private meet-ings with Chinese officials. The forum would deal purely with regional economic cooperation, he said. Siew would be accompanied by a dozen business leaders, including Taiwan Semicon-ductor Manufacturing chairman Morris Chang (張忠謀) and Uni-President Group chairman Kao Chin-yen (高清愿), Hung said.
■ Diplomacy
Huang to attend APEC forum
Minister of Education Huang Jong-tsun (黃榮村) will attend a two-day education ministers meeting of the APEC forum scheduled to open in Santiago, Chile, on April 29. This is the third time that education ministers from all APEC members will meet to discuss cooperative pro- jects in education and cultural development. In the previous meetings, education ministers from Taiwan and China both
took part in multilateral discussions without any hitches. Huang will leave Taipei today for the US where he will chair a meeting of Taiwan cultural officials stationed in seven US cities and two Canadian cities to discuss their agendas.
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