■ Politics
KMT to focus on election
Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) Policy Committee Convener Tseng Yung-chuan (曾永權) yesterday announced six proposed bills that the KMT caucus will focus on in the upcoming provisional legislative session. Among the proposed draft bills were establishing an investigation committee to probe the March 19 shooting the president and vice president, assembling a committee to probe the activation of the national security mechanism which was launched following the March 19 shooting and amendment of the Constitution. Additionally, the KMT will focus on draft bills concerning the organization of the Central Election Commission (CEC), the proposed national communication council (NCC) and the Law Governing Legislators' Exercise of Power (立法院職權行使法), said Tseng, who made the report during the Central Standing Committee's weekly meeting yesterday.
■ Society
Firefighters pick coconuts
Firefighters in Chiayi were faced with a special assignment yesterday when they were summoned to a school to help pick coconuts to prevent them from falling and hitting pedestrians. There are more than a dozen coconut trees on the campus of the Peishing Junior High School and school authorities noted that because falling coconuts have in the past damaged vehicles parked under the trees, they were worried that a similar event could result in injuries to people. Ho Min-ping (侯閔評), a fire squad leader, said that he and his colleagues are used to dealing with swarms of wasps and having to catch snakes, but never thought they would be required to pick coconuts. Ho said that the firefighters used the mission as a chance to sharpen their skills in operating their fire truck and harvested more than 100 coconuts in the process.
■ Animal rights
Seminars planned
Young animal rights activists across the country will get a chance to meet each other and discuss animal protection strategies beginning Sept. 9 thanks to the efforts of the student group Dogs Obligate Guardians (DOG). The seminar next month will mark the first in a series of discussions targeted at animal-friendly youths aged 18 to 30. The series aims to increase awareness among younger Taiwanese about animal rights and interaction among animal rights activists, with a focus on Taiwan's stray-dog problem, said group members.
■ Bureaucracy
Salary hike considered
The Executive Yuan will decide by Aug. 12 whether to raise the salaries of military personnel, civil servants and teachers, the head of the Central Personnel Administration (CPA) said yesterday. CPA Director-General Lee Yi-yang (李逸洋) said that a screening committee for the salary hikes will meet in a few days to discuss the issue. The committee will take into consideration economic growth, price index changes, per capita income growth and changes in the private sector in making its evaluation, Lee said. Executive Yuan Spokesman Chen Chi-mai (陳其邁) said that the CPA has estimated that a 3 percent salary hike for the nation's 600,000 military personnel, civil servants and teachers will increase government expenditure by NT$18 billion (US$530.97 million). The last such salary hike was in 2001.
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