A partnership between central government and local authorities is crucial to appropriate management on certain important issues, including disaster prevention and disease control, because the environment in Taiwan is more fragile than ever at a time when global warming has been affecting the weather everywhere, Vice President Annette Lu (
Lu made the remarks at a meeting held yesterday for the heads of local governments, to whom she provided the latest information about Taiwan's vulnerability to the spread of bird flu, and also its problems with water and soil preservation.
Lu said that disaster prevention has become one of the top priorities for Taiwan because devastating natural disasters in the last year had revealed the environmental vulnerability in Taiwan.
Lu said that what she saw when she took a helicopter flight over Taipei, Taoyuan, Hsinchu and Miaoli counties was poorly preserved mountains and forests.
"Disaster prevention and soil preservation are more important than carrying out new construction. Such tasks have to be jointly conducted by both central government and local authorities," Lu said.
The vice president said green industries, which stress energy efficiency, had been promoted in Taiwan. However, energy conservation deserves to be further promoted in daily life.
Events held in the evening should be canceled in order to conserve electricity in a bid to keep abreast of spirits regarding the implementation of Kyoto Protocol, she added.
Lu criticized some local authorities for failing to use their budget appropriately, because several new construction projects costing millions of dollars eventually became places for the reproduction of mosquitoes.
In addition, Lu said there have been 13 countries in Asia affected by the spread of bird flu. Fortunately, Taiwan remains unaffected by deadly H5N1 virus strain.
However, Lu said the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) had predicted that migratory birds might increase Taiwan's vulnerability to the disease. CDC information suggested that, once bird flu spread in Taiwan, about 5.3 million Taiwanese would be affected. Among them, 70,000 people could be hospitalized and 14,000 might lose their lives, the CDC said last week.
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
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
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