Politics
Yeh recovering from surgery
Vice Premier Yeh Chu-lan (葉菊蘭) underwent surgery yesterday to remove gall-stones and was expected to check out today, according to doctors at National Taiwan University Hospital. The doctors said about 30 gallstones were removed during a 30-minute proce-dure and Yeh was doing
well. Although Yeh wanted to check out of the hospital yesterday afternoon, the doctors advised her to recuperate for another day or two. President Chen
Shui-bian (陳水扁) and Premier Yu Shyi-kun visited Yeh at the hospital and
told her there was no need for her to preside over a meeting scheduled for today.
Politics
Ho retracts resignation
Minister of Economic Affairs Ho Mei-yueh (何美玥) with-drew her offer to resign
after President Chen and Premier Yu asked her to
stay, the ministry said yesterday. "The minister agreed to stay in the post, but she hopes the premier supports the plan to resolve the water resources prob-lem," said a ministry official. Ho has come under intense criticism over the handling of damage from Typhoon Aere. Thousands of house-holds in Taoyuan County
are still without water
more than two weeks since Aere damaged a reservoir and water treatment plants supplying the area. As of yesterday, roughly 81 percent of the county had water, while workers were still struggling to boost supplies to the entire network, said the official.
Cross-Strait Ties
Illegal migrants repatriated
Mainland Affairs Council Vice Chairman Chiu Tai-san (邱太三) yesterday hailed
the progress in repatriation of illegal Chinese immigrants, after China
sent ships to take back 115 people earlier in the day. Chiu urged Beijing to repatriate more people before the Mid-Autumn Festival on Sept. 28. There are about 2,500 Chinese waiting for repatriation,
Chiu said. Noting that the influx of illegal immigrants has posed a financial and social burden, Chiu said China should cooperate in resolving the issue. China also repatriated five wanted criminal suspects to Taiwan yesterday.
Diplomacy
British MP backs WHO bid
Member of Parliament (MP) Tom Cox presented a motion Tuesday in the House of Commons calling for the
UK to support Taiwan's bid to join the World Health Organization (WHO) as an observer. As the chief of a pro-Taiwan group in par-liament, Cox said in his motion that Britain should support Taiwan's attempts
to join the WHO not as a
part of the Chinese delega-tion but as an independent observer, which he said is the right of any democratic independent country. Cox's motion has won the spon-sorship of 16 MPs. Cox submitted a similar motion in February.
Crime
Drug smuggler nabbed
A young woman who works as a public relations manager at a Taipei pub was nabbed on Thursday trying smuggle heroin from China, police sources reported yesterday. The woman, identified as Tsai Fu-man (蔡馥蔓) was apprehended at CKS International Airport after arriving from Macau with540g of high-grade heroin, the police said. Investigators from the Criminal Investigation Bureau said Tsai admitted that members of a ring headed by a Chinese man known as "Chairman Qiao" had persuaded her to smuggle the drugs.
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:
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