■ Media
TV station disputes ruling
TVBS, a Hong Kong-invested TV station in Taiwan, said yesterday that it refuses to accept a decision by the Government Information Office (GIO) that it has violated the law and will seek remedial measures in line with law. TVBS, which recently drew the ire of the government and the Democ-ratic Progressive Party (DPP) by exposing damning evidence of a ranking former official suspected of invol-vement in the Kaohsiung mass rapid transit scandal, was responding to the GIO's move a day earlier to slap the station with a NT$1 million (US$29,722) fine for violating the Satellite Broadcasting Law, which limits foreign capital in broadcast media.
■ Immigration
New agency for foreigners
In the face of a continued inflow of foreigners, Taiwan will soon establish an agency exclusively dedicated to immigration affairs, a spokesman for the Ministry of the Interior said yesterday. The ministry official made the comment one day after the Legislative Yuan gave its final approval for establishing an immigration administration to take charge of all aspects of immigration affairs. Vice Minister of the Interior Chien Tai-lang (簡太郎) said a day earlier that the immigration administration can begin operations soon to tackle "the many problems" arising from the continued entry of foreign brides from China and other Southeast Asian countries as well as blue-collar and skilled workers.
■ Health
Taiwan helps fight bird flu
Taiwan will donate US$500,000 at the up-coming 13th Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) summit to assist in the regional effort against bird flu, an official said yesterday. "Fighting bird flu is one of the main topics of the APEC summit, so we will announce there that Taiwan will donate US$500,000 to contribute to the regional fight against bird flu," Liao Tung-chou (廖東周), deputy chief of the Foreign Ministry's Department of International Organizations, told a seminar. The summit will be held in Busan, South Korea, on Nov. 18 and Nov. 19. Leaders from the 21 APEC member states will meet to discuss regional economic issues and how to fight bird flu.
■ Politics
Misbehavior out: Hsieh
Premier Frank Hsieh (謝長廷) yesterday said that violence or any sort of misbehavior cannot and should not be rationalized. Hsieh said during the weekly Cabinet meeting that "when behavior is wrong, it is wrong anyway." He was commenting on writer and poet Tu Shi-san (杜十三) threatening to kill every member of the premier's family. However, the premier said that he would affirm Tu's confession when Tu said that he would apologize for what he did and take responsibility for it. Hsieh said that he understood that some people would support Tu's behavior and said that Tu does not have to apologize.
■ Justice
Two probe Lafayette case
Public prosecutor-general Wu Ying-chao (吳英昭) yesterday confirmed at the legislature that prosecutors Albert Tsai (蔡秋明) and Lo Jung-chien (羅榮乾), in charge of the Lafayette frigate scandal investigation, are in Switzerland investigating records of bank deposits made by fugitive Taiwanese arms broker Andrew Wang (汪傳浦). "The probe of those bank documents could mean a breakthrough in the scandal," Wu said. A Swiss Federal Commission on Oct. 29 approved the handover of bank files to foreign judicial authorities concerning the controversial sale of French warships to 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
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