■ Defense
Penghu hosts live-fire drills
The military held a live-fire exercise on the outlying Penghu Islands yesterday to simulate actions against an invasion by China. In the "Lien Hsin No. 248" joint land, sea and air exercise, combat readiness was practiced under the scenario of unusual military maneuvering along China's coast, with Chinese fighter jets flying across the Taiwan Strait and Chinese frigates approaching Penghu to try to intercept Taiwan's supply ships. However, operations of the air force and navy were called off because of poor visibility as a result of fog. Penghu County councilors Li Tien-chin (李添進) and Hsu Yueh-li (許月裡) demanded that the military hold the routine exercise somewhere else in the future, saying that the exercises damage Penghu's marine ecology and affect the lives of Penghu residents. Military officials said the impact of the exercise on residents should be minimal because the site of the exercise is several hundred meters away from their communities.
■ Politics
Chiang may visit Hong Kong
Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) Vice Chairman Chiang Pin-kun (江丙坤) hopes to visit Hong Kong following his visit to China last month, press reports said yesterday. A visit to the southern Chinese territory would come two months after KMT Taipei Mayor Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九) was barred from entering, Chinese-language media reported. The politician's office in Taipei confirmed he had loosely scheduled a visit to Hong Kong on April 17 and 18 to attend a business forum on cross-strait relations. The immigration department in Hong Kong would not confirm or deny whether a visa had been issued.
■ Security
ID cards require fingerprints
Preparations for the launch of the new national identification card on July 1 will be based on the existing law which requires that citizens be fingerprinted when claiming the new IDs, Interior Minister Su Jia-chyuan (蘇嘉全) said yesterday. Su made the remarks at a training program to familiarize related staff with the ID card replacement operations. The remarks came one day after the Cabinet passed a revised draft bill to remove the fingerprint requirement in the existing household registration law. Although the Cabinet has passed the bill, preparations for launching the new ID card will be made based on the fingerprint requirement in case the bill fails to gain approval in the legislature, Su said. It has been learned that if the bill is not approved, the Interior Ministry will have to purchase around 900 fingerprint scanners at a total cost of NT$500 million.
■ Diplomacy
Lawmakers urge respect
Several Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) lawmakers yesterday urged both government officials and opposition politicians to respect the national dignity in their pursuit of diplomacy with foreign countries. DPP Legislator Cheng Yun-peng (鄭運鵬) was referring to Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) Vice Chairman Chiang Pin-kun's (江丙坤) visit to China last week. Cheng said Chiang's China visit was made without the authorization of the government. Given that China just passed the "Anti-Secession" Law, Cheng said Chiang's visit and the consensus he achieved with Beijing on the issues which still lack consensus within this country will be seen as "kowtowing" to China. He said Chiang's visit was unjustifiable and cannot represent all the people of Taiwan.
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