■ Infrastructures
Projects postponed
The Ministry of Transportation and Communications yesterday denied that the budget for several public construction projects has been changed. While plans for the Suao-Hualien highway and an extension of the MRT system to connect Taipei to the CKS airport have been removed from the recently passed special budget for 10 new public construction projects, the ministry said yesterday that they would be put into the budget for next year. "The 10 new public construction projects were set to begin in January. However, the special budget was not passed until June 11 and will not be reviewed until September or October. By then, we will have about two or three months left in the fiscal year," said Department of Railways and Highways Director Lee Lung-wen (李龍文). He said that government officials overseeing projects receiving funding from special budgets could be penalized if their projects fail to reach 80 percent completion by the end of a fiscal year. Lee said that the total amount allocated for transportation projects, NT$249.9 billion, had not changed.
■ Media
GIO to act on KMT radio
Premier Yu Shyi-kun has authorized the Government Information Office (GIO) to handle issues regarding the license of a radio company controlled by the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT), GIO Director-general Lin Chia-lung (林佳龍) said yesterday. Lin made the remarks ahead of a GIO meeting held to screen the Broadcasting Corp of China's (BCC) application for renewal of its operating license. Lin announced a day earlier that the GIO would push for amendments to the existing broadcasting and television law to ban any private radio company from simultaneously controlling more than two nationwide broadcast channels. Before the proposed "anti-monopoly" law revision is completed, Lin said, the GIO plans to issue only interim licenses in relevant situations. The BCC controls three nationwide channels.
■ Diplomacy
AIT has new spokesperson
Dana Shell Smith, the new chief of the Public Affairs Section at the American Institute in Taiwan (AIT), assumed office yesterday, the AIT announced in a press release. Smith will serve concurrently as AIT spokeswoman, the press statement said. The AIT represents US interests in Taiwan in the absence of official diplomatic ties. Smith is a 12-year career diplomat, and has served in Jordan, Israel and Egypt. She graduated from the University of California at San Diego with a BA in political science and Middle East Studies. She speaks Mandarin, Arabic, Hebrew and Spanish.
■ Crime
Graft suspects questioned
Fourteen people have been summoned to interviews with the Black Gold Investigation Center of the Taiwan High Court Prosecutors' Office in connection with a corruption scandal involving the Taiwan Railway Administration's NT$940 million purchase of axle counters. According to local reports, the possible suspects include French manufacturer Alcatel's representative to Taiwan, as well as Liu Ta-fu (劉大福), an aide to Democratic Progressive Party Legislator Wang Tuoh (王拓), and Taiwan Siemens president Leslie Lok (駱一華). Restrictions on leaving the country have been issued for several of the implicated individuals.
FLU SEASON: Twenty-six severe cases were reported from Tuesday last week to Monday, including a seven-year-old girl diagnosed with influenza-associated encephalopathy Nearly 140,000 people sought medical assistance for diarrhea last week, the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) said on Tuesday. From April 7 to Saturday last week, 139,848 people sought medical help for diarrhea-related illness, a 15.7 percent increase from last week’s 120,868 reports, CDC Epidemic Intelligence Center Deputy Director Lee Chia-lin (李佳琳) said. The number of people who reported diarrhea-related illness last week was the fourth highest in the same time period over the past decade, Lee said. Over the past four weeks, 203 mass illness cases had been reported, nearly four times higher than the 54 cases documented in the same period
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:
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
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