■ Politics
KMT primary heats up
Heating up competition within the pan-blue camp for Taipei County commissioner, former minister of justice Liao Cheng-hao (廖正豪) registered yesterday to enter the party's preliminaries for the seat. Liao said that he had restored his party membership a month ago, and will have the necessary 5,000 signatures needed to qualify for the preliminaries. There are five other competitors: KMT legislators Hung Hsiu-chu (洪秀柱), Lee Chia-chin (李嘉進) and Chou Hsi-wei (周錫瑋); Wang Lin-huei (王玲惠), head of the Taipei County Federation of Chinese Business Women, and Sanchung Mayor Lee Chien-lung (李乾龍). Chou created a scandal last week when he left the People First Party and registered with the KMT in order to enter the race.
■ Crime
Five men jailed in Vietnam
Five Taiwanese men were given jail terms ranging from two to nine years for using fake travelers checks in Vietnam. Lee Yao-yu, Wong Chi-feng, Chang Yi-yu, Liu Che-an and Su Wen-hsien used 21 fake checks to buy around US$95,000 worth of gold jewelry, diamonds and laptops last July, said Bui Kim Dung, an official of the Ho Chi Minh City People's Court. "Lee and Wong were both sentenced to nine years in jail for leading the fraud," Dung said. "Chang and Liu were given jail terms of eight years, while Su Wen-hsien got two years." The counterfeit checks were made in Taiwan and the five men were part of a gang who had been passing off fake checks there. The men were arrested after they had been using the fake checks for several days.
■ Diplomacy
Greater outreach urged
Taiwan should develop the ability to establish an agenda at major events such as the APEC forum to boost its influence, Vice Premier Wu Rong-i (吳榮義) said yesterday. Wu made the remarks while attending an APEC operations seminar sponsored by the Taiwan APEC Study Center. Wu noted that APEC and the WTO are two international organizations that Taiwan participates in, and that the APEC leaders' meeting is the only venue where its officials can get together with world leaders and officials. He said that no publicity drive could be more effective to demonstrate the nation's sovereignty than Taiwanese leaders mingling with other leaders. But he said that the agenda of the APEC meeting has been affected by the changing international political and economic situation, and the government has to keep abreast of the latest developments to work out how Taiwan can increase its presence.
■ Architecture
Urban planners visit Stuttgart
A delegation headed by Kaohsiung County Commissioner Yang Chiu-hsing (楊秋興) visited Stuttgart on Sunday to inspect the city's urban planning and greening project. Stuttgart, which used to be an overcrowded, overdeveloped industrial city, has undergone a major transformation in recent years under a municipal government "greening" plan to make the city into a European commercial and industrial center with a high-quality living environment to attract people to live, work and invest. Yang praised the city for its greening efforts, saying during the one-day visit that Kaohsiung County can learn from it in planning a university town in Yenchao Township and an urban park at the site of the former Weiwu military barracks.
■ Crime
Bounty on forgers raised
The reward for information leading to the arrest or indictment of forgers has been raised to NT$500,000 from NT$200,000, according to the Intellectual Property Office under the Ministry of Economic Affairs. The office urged people to use a toll-free hotline (080-001-6597) to report forgers. An official said that Web sites are replacing shops as the most popular places for selling forged products.
■ Crime
Four nabbed for forgery
Four men were arrested yesterday for producing fake Microsoft certificates of authenticity. Computers with the fake stickers were first found in Australia last July, and Australian police tracked the maker down to this country. Acting on a tip-off from Australian officials, Taipei police raided a workshop in Sungshan, Taipei City, yesterday. Four people were arrested along with 33 sheets of a wide variety of fake certificates for Windows 98, Windows XP and other software.
■ Diplomacy
Troupe performs overseas
The Ming Hwa Yuan Taiwanese Opera troupe is scheduled to perform in Bangkok this weekend to celebrate the 55th anniversary of King Bhumibol Adulyadej and Queen Sirikit's marriage and the 50th birthday of Princess Maha Chakri Sirindhorne. At the invitation of the Thai government, the opera troupe, founded in 1929, will present its most popular play, The Living Buddha Chikung. The award-winning play, which premiered in 1983, features Buddhist truths, principles and practices. It is perfect for the play to be performed in a Buddhist country, the head of the troupe, Chen Sheng-fu (陳勝福), said yesterday.
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:
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
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