■ Fruit
Tangerines sent to Brunei
Taichung County is preparing to sell 36,000kg of its famous Tungshih Township tangerines to Brunei. The Tungshih Farmer's Association has in recent years been helping farmers produce and export its superb agricultural products to try to upgrade their competitive edge. The association said that Tungshih's sweet and juicy tangerines were exported to Brunei last year on a trial basis, where they proved very popular. Exports this year will increase dramatically. A first batch of 20,000kg of tangerines was shipped yesterday, with a second batch of 16,000kg scheduled to go in January. The two batches combined are worth about NT$2 million (US$62,110).
■ Defense
Rand report `hypothetical'
A report by the Rand Corporation that outlines a war scenario across the Taiwan Strait in 2012 is hypothetical in nature and not a prediction, a senior policy analyst at the US think tank said Thursday. In the study titled Assuring Access in Key Strategic Regions: Toward a Long-term Strategy for the US Army, Rand posited a scenario in which China attempts a conquering strategy designed to seize part of Taiwan with ground forces in 2012 with the aim of pushing Taipei directly into a fast-track framework for unification talks. Eric Larson, one of the authors of the report, said the purpose of the study is to help the US Army better understand its regional military access in Europe, Asia and the Middle East.
■ Defense
Politician criticizes rivals
Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) Legislator Chiu Yung-jen (邱永仁) said yesterday that what he described as the "irrational attitude" of the opposition parties to block a NT$610.8 billion (US$18.23 billion) special budget for arms purchases from the US has become a "landmine" in Taiwan's security. Chiu was responding to recent remarks by US Deputy Secretary of State Richard Armitage that Taiwan is "probably the biggest landmine" in China's relations with the US. He stressed that Armitage's remarks underscore Taiwan's need to buy advanced weaponry to defend itself. Taiwanese people have to realize that they cannot rely on others and have to beef up their defenses and have confidence in the country's ability to defend itself, he added.
■ Ceremonies
Groundbreaking held
Formosa Plastics Group and Chang-Gung Memorial Hospital chairman Wang Yung-ching (王永慶) yesterday presided over a ground-breaking ceremony for the Chang-Gung Medical Center building in Chiayi County. The building will comprise 13 stories above ground, two underground floors and will accommodate 1,500 beds, according to Wang Cheng-yi, superintendent of the Chiayi Branch of Chang-Gung Memorial Hospital. The project is estimated to cost NT$8 billion (US$240.96 million) and is scheduled for completion in March 2006, he said. Calling Chiayi his "second hometown," Wang Yung-ching said Chiayi is where he started his business career and that he hopes to do something meaningful to upgrade the standard of local medical services. In the company of Chiayi Magistrate Chen Ming-wen (陳明文), the tycoon later visited the designated site of a planned retirement community.
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