■ Legislature
Taiwan Expo budget axed
The planned 2008 Taiwan Expo is destined to be stillborn as legislators agreed to strike out the annual budget earmarked for the event during cross-party talks yesterday. During the meeting, Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) caucus whip Chen Chieh (陳杰) proposed to delete the NT$2.2 billion that the government has earmarked for the event in this year's annual budget. Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) caucus whip Jao Yung-ching (趙永清) agreed to the KMT's proposal, saying that it is meaningless to pass the budget if the bill governing the organization of the fair fails to clear the legislature. Despite a hunger strike staged by civic groups and the endorsement of Legislative Speaker Wang Jin-pyng (王金平), the KMT legislative caucus has stood firm in its opposition to the event, citing the nation's financial difficulties. The government planned to spend NT$19.5 billion (US$608 million) to hold the four-month exposition. It hoped the event would attract about 5.5 million visitors, including 5 million foreigners and 500,000 Taiwanese.
■ Education
Wang opens schools for poor
Wang Chien-shien, one of the founders of the New Party, has faded from the political spectrum but found a "second spring" by establishing schools in China for children from poor families. Wang, who served as a finance minister when the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) was in power, is currently chairman of two high schools in Zhejiang Province -- the Pinghu Xinaihuaxin Senior High School and the Pinghu Foreign Language and Business Experimental School. The Pinghu Xinaihuaxin Senior High School is financed and operated by an educational investment company owned by the Pinghu City Government and one of Wang's foundations. The school will be completely donated to the Pinghu City Government after 20 years of operation, Wang said. Currently, the school operates 38 classes ranging from the first to the third year of high school education, with a faculty of about 150 people. In the Pinghu Foreign Language and Business Experimental School, nine youths have been accepted, all of whom are from poor or workers' families outside Zhejiang Province, according to Wang.
■ Technology
Officials visit Israel
Taiwan and Israel are complementary to each other in many fields when it comes to science and technology research and development, Taiwan National Science Council Chairman Wu Mao-kun (吳茂崑) said in Tel Aviv yesterday. Wu, currently on a visit in Israel with Academia Sinica Vice President Ovid Tzeng (曾志朗) and a group of Taiwan officials and leaders from the science and technology research field, visited Tel Aviv University and the Weizmann Institute of Science Tuesday to gain a better understanding of science and technology development in Israel. Wu, Tzeng and the group visited Israel's Ministry of Science and Technology the day before to probe the prospects for bilateral cooperation in the science and technology fields between the two countries. According to Wu, there have been many "talks" regarding science and technology cooperation between Taiwan and Israel, but few of them have been put into practice."It is hoped that our visit here this time will help materialize actual cooperative projects," Wu said.
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