■ Politics
Wang to chair meeting
After having said he would not be present at the Chinese Nationalist Party's (KMT) Central Standing Committee meeting today, Legislative Speaker Wang Jin-Pyng (王金平) late last night said he would attend the meeting, but refrained from revealing whether or not he would remain in his post as a party vice chairman. Wang will preside over the meeting on behalf of KMT Chairman Lien Chan (連戰), who is in the US. The committee is scheduled to approve a motion endorsed by the party's five vice chairmen, including Ma and Wang, and all 31 committee members to make Lien the KMT's first honorary chairman. Wang has been avoiding Ma since losing last Saturday's chairmanship election, while the chairman-elect has been trying to get him on the phone or see him in person.
■ Diplomacy
Japanese response awaited
The government has filed nine requests ahead of a formal round of fishery talks with with Japan and is looking forward to a positive response, Ministry of Foreign Affairs spokesman Michel Lu (呂慶龍) said at a news conference yesterday. Lu said the requests were filed at a July 12 preparatory meeting for the 15th round of fishery talks set for July 29 in Tokyo. He declined to reveal any details of the requests. As for Taiwanese fishermen's demands that their representatives be invited to join the negotiating team and that the level of bilateral talks be upgraded, Lu said the requests have been submitted to Japan and that the Japanese side is studying their feasibility.
■ Labor
CLA to review brokers
The Council of Labor Affairs (CLA) will evaluate more than 800 foreign labor brokerages nationwide next month, council officials said yesterday. The results of the evaluation are expected to be released by the end of December. The council conducted a similar review last year, in which 86 brokerages were placed in the A-category of an A to E ranking system, with A being the highest-ranking. At present there are no laws controlling the quality of such businesses. The council plans to draft an amendment to the law governing the operations of labor brokerages in order to weed out poorly performing ones, they said. An amendment will allow the authorities to refuse to renew business certificates for firms that are rank E in two consecutive evaluations, the officials said.
■ Health
Ethnicity a cancer factor
A study spanning 14 Asian cities has found the highest incidence of colorectal cancer among ethnic Chinese, a trend which researchers in Hong Kong on Monday blamed on a Westernized diet. Between last October and April this year, doctors performed colonoscopies on 5,055 people and found polyps in 19.4 percent. Of these, 4 percent had cancer. Colorectal polyps and cancers were found in more than 18 percent of ethnic Chinese, followed by just over 12 percent of Indonesians, 12 percent of Malaysians, 10 percent of Thais and eight percent of Filipinos. Only 5 percent of ethnic Indians suffered the same condition. One of the researchers blamed the phenomenon on the genetic makeup of ethnic Chinese and their changing diet. Researchers found the ethnic Chinese in Hong Kong the most susceptible to advanced colorectal polyps and cancer -- 11 percent of them were diagnosed with the condition -- compared to just over 2 percent of ethnic Chinese in 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