■ Defense
Military drills postponed
The Ministry of National Defense has postponed the Han Kuang No.20 drill scheduled for today due to Typhoon Haitang. The drill will now be held next Wednesday at the Taichung air force base, the ministry said yesterday. It's the second time the annual drill has had to be rescheduled due to a typhoon in the past three years. The ministry said President Chen Shui-bian (陳水扁) will still preside over the drill on the assigned day. Meanwhile, the Wanan No. 28 air raid drill scheduled for today in the south of the country has also been postponed. The ministry opened an emergency operations center yesterday to provide typhoon-related relief and rescue services.
■ Cross-strait ties
China tells Ma reforms vital
Official Chinese media yesterday said it was crucial that Taipei Mayor Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九) reform the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) to enable it to unseat the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP). The state-run China Daily said Ma faced a number of challenges to regain control from the DPP. "Among them is how best to reform the party, remain unified and integrate the pan-blue camp formed by the opposition KMT, People First Party and New Party," it said in an editorial. "All of these matters are crucial if the KMT is to retake power in the 2008 `presidential' polls." In a message to Ma, Chinese President Hu Jintao (胡錦濤) expressed hopes that the Chinese Communist Party and the KMT could work together to promote peaceful relations between China and Taiwan. Ma said yesterday that he felt they could. "I hope that both the KMT and the Chinese Communist Party will work together for the benefit of compatriots on both sides of the [Taiwan] Strait," he said in a letter to Hu, the Xinhua news agency said.
■ Politics
Lien to get honorary post
Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) Chairman Lien Chan (連戰) will become the party's first "honorary" chairman after the party's congress approves a motion to give him the honor, KMT Secretary-General Lin Fong-cheng (林豐正) said yesterday. Lin said that the motion, already backed by five vice chairmen and all 31 Central Standing Committee members, is sure to clear the committee's weekly meeting tomorrow. The motion will be put forward for final approval at the party's national congress on Aug. 17, he said. Lien will step down from the KMT's top post on Aug. 19. Both chairman-elect Ma Ying-jeou. and his defeated rival, Legislative Speaker Wang Jin-pyng, signed the motion. Lien is now visiting Washington for a International Democrat Union meeting.
■ Politics
KMT mulls special session
The Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) legislative caucus said yesterday that it is prepared to discuss with the DPP the convening of a special legislative session now that the KMT chairmanship election is over. KMT whip Chen Chieh (陳杰) made the remarks after DPP caucus whip Lai Ching-te (賴清德) said he hoped the opposition would agree to a special session to deal with an NT$80 billion flood-control project and other key bills in the wake of Typhoon Haitang. The KMT and the People First Party have so far refused to agree to a special session. Chen said that it might be possible to convene a special session to discuss the flood-control project, but the DPP should not include other "irrelevant" bills in the session on which the pan-blue and pan-green camps have not reached a consensus.
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