■ Immigration
Spouses get easier entry
Restrictions on the entry of Chinese spouses of foreign professionals into Taiwan are to be further eased, Mainland Affairs Council (MAC) Vice Chairman Chiu Tai-san (邱太三) said yesterday. Chiu made the remarks after MAC commissioners passed a package of revisions of the regulations governing the entry into Taiwan of Chinese citizens at a meeting held earlier in the day. According to the revised rules, Chinese spouses will no longer be required to give up their Chinese passports or other travel papers to the Taiwan authorities. Under the new rules, foreign professionals' direct supervisors or their corporate CEOs, regardless of nationality, can serve as guarantors for their Chinese spouses.
■ Politics
Election ad ban starts Dec. 1
Television and radio stations will be banned from broadcasting legislative election campaign commercials as of tomorrow, when the 10-day official campaign period for the Dec. 11 legislative elections will begin, the Central Election Commission (CEC) said yesterday. "From Dec. 1, political parties, individual legislative candidates and third parties will be prohibited from airing commercials on TV and radio channels," said CEC Chairman Chang Cheng-hsiung (張政雄). From that date, Chang went on, TV and radio stations will also be prohibited from campaigning for any individual candidates in their programs. According to the television and radio broadcasting law, Chang said, violators will face fines. The fines for cable-TV stations could reach a maximum of NT$500,000, while law-breaking terrestrial TV stations could be slapped with fines of up to NT$1 million.
■ Diplomacy
AIT reports suspect package
American Institute in Taiwan (AIT) officials notified police yesterday after receiving a suspicious looking package earlier in the day. Ta-an District police and bomb squad officers were immediately sent to the AIT Taipei office on Hsinyi Road to deal with the unmarked parcel. The bomb squad discovered that the package contained a letter and two bottles of water. The bottled water was then examined and found to contain no dangerous substances. The police handed the letter to the AIT officials, who said that it was an appeal letter, the contents of which they declined to disclose. The AIT officials said they notified the police of the suspicious package in accordance with the US government's standard counter-terrorism procedures.
■ Politics
President puts funds in trust
All of President Chen Shui-bian's (陳水扁) assets have been put in trust, with the exception of deposits amounting to NT$540,000 (US$16,770) under the name of his wife Wu Shu-jen (吳淑珍), according to a report released yesterday by the Control Yuan. As shown in the report disclosing the assets of public officials, three properties registered under Chen's name in Taipei City and Tainan County have been put in trust. Also in trust are stocks with a combined face value of NT$8.19 million under Wu's name, as well as deposits amounting to NT$28.83 million under Chen's name and another NT$12.69 million under Wu's name. Chen promised to put his assets in trust during the run-up to the March 20 presidential election, after the first lady was attacked for improperly engaging in stock trading.
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