■ Elections
Poll decision delayed
The Central Election Commission (CEC) failed to decide yesterday on whether to combine the elections for county commissioners and city mayors, city and county councilors and village and township mayors at the end of the year. "It is a decision left to be made by the Taiwan Election Commission and City and County Election Commissions," CEC Deputy Secretary-General Teng Tien-yu (鄧天祐) said. The Taiwan Election Commission is scheduled to hold a meeting on the matter next Tuesday. The majority of the CEC commissioners were in favor of combining the three local government elections, Teng said.
■ Crime
Prosecutors to aid police
Minister of Justice Morely Shih (施茂林) said yesterday that with major criminal cases remaining unsolved, he has asked chief prosecutors of the district prosecutor's offices around the nation to work with police to effectively clear the docket. He has also asked State Public Prosecutor-General Wu Ying-chao (吳英昭) to convene a major conference on social order. Shih's remarks came in the wake of attacks on two policemen in broad daylight on Sunday that left one dead and another seriously injured, as well as a kidnapping case involving a notorious wanted man. Both cases are unsolved. Shih said that the manpower of some local prosecutor's offices is limited, and they are often burdened with matters involving public prosecution. For this reason, prosecutors must work and coordinate well with police to safeguard social order, Shih said.
■ Education
Schools agree on exchange
Officials from National Chiao Tung University and the University of Illinois signed a memorandum of under- standing (MOU) on Tuesday. Peter Wu, dean of Chiao Tung University's College of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science, and Richard Balhut, head of Illinois school's Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, signed the MOU on behalf of their schools. Under the MOU, 19 Chiao Tung students will go to Illinois. Balhut said that he hopes all his department's students can have the experience of learning through international exchanges, adding that his university has cooperated with universities in Japan and South Korea.
■ Agriculture
China's offer dismissed
An agricultural official said yesterday that Beijing's promise to offer preferential tariffs to agricultural exports from Taiwan is a lot of hot air. Tsai Chang-lung (蔡長龍), president of the Taiwan Provincial Fruit Trade Association, made the remarks at an exhibition of Taiwanese fruit in Beijing organized by the association, the Taiwan Affairs Office of China's State Council and the Hong-Kong based Chinese Commercial and Industrial Coordination Society. Tsai said that Southeast Asian fruit exports to China enjoy tariff-free preferences. He urged China to quickly offer tariff-free preferences and more convenient customs procedures for Taiwanese farmers to show its goodwill.
■ Travel
US bans lighters on planes
Beginning today, lighters are banned on all inbound flights into the US and its territories. "This measure is in parallel with the latest regulation set by the US Transportation Security Administration," Huang Shun-chao (黃順超), security inspection chief of the Aviation Police Office, said yesterday. Lighters may not be placed in checked-in baggage, carry-on items or carried by passengers.
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