■ Law and order
KRTC official denies charges
Almost four hours of videotapes taken of the bidding process for construction of six sections of Kaohsiung's rapid transit system were played at a court hearing yesterday during which the suspects were given a chance to give their interpretations of the recorded facts. Chen Min-hsien (陳敏賢), former vice chairman of the Kaohsiung Rapid Transit Corp (KRTC) and a key suspect in the case, denied he had known the base prices for each bid and had revealed them to contractors he favored. He claimed the video recordings show that he couldn't have had access to the base prices. Chen, former KRTC deputy general manager Lai Hsien-yu (賴獻玉), a former Ministry of Transportation and Communications (MOTC) official and two former Kaohsiung city government officials were indicted on charges of disclosing classified information and breach of trust after the prosecution found the winning bidders offered prices "unusually close to the government's base prices."
PHOTO: HUANG CHIH-YUAN
■ Politics
Arms bill fails for 44th time
The legislature's Procedure Committee yesterday rejected the arms procurement plan for the 44th time, while the confirmation of the National Communications Commission (NCC) members were placed on the legislative agenda. The pan-blue-controlled committee also shelved the confirmation of President Chen Shui-bian's (陳水扁) Control Yuan nominees, the administrative corporation bill, the disposition of party assets bill and draft amendments to the Referendum Law (公民投票法). A draft bill to create an ethics and anti-corruption bureau under the Ministry of Justice and draft amendments to the Organic Law of the Ministry of Justice (法務部組織法) were also deferred.
■ Diplomacy
Hospitals to strengthen ties
The Ministry of Foreign Affairs (MOFA) yesterday announced a new assistance initiative in which several Taiwanese hospitals will adopt the local hospitals of Pacific island countries in a bid to bolster Taiwan's relations with its South Pacific allies. Director of MOFA's Department of East Asia and Pacific Affairs Donald Lee (李傳通) said yesterday the new medical assistance measures would provide medical experts to the South Pacific countries of Papua New Guinea, the Solomon Islands, Kiribati, Fiji, Palau and the Marshall Islands. Papua New Guinea and Fiji do not have official relations with Taiwan.
■ Diplomacy
MOFA rejects Spratlys plea
The Ministry of Foreign Affairs (MOFA) yesterday rejected Vietnam's demand that it cease building airstrips on the disputed Spratlys archipelago, an oil-rich region over which many Asian countries, including China, also claim sovereignty. Vietnam's Foreign Ministry said last week Taiwan's plans to build airstrips on an islet it calls Thai Binh would be a serious violation of Vietnamese sovereignty. "We have no political intention or military purpose, and do not intend to cause tensions to rise in the region," MOFA said in a statement. "We urge Vietnam to treat the airport construction rationally and to not divert the focus to sovereignty disputes," it said. Taiwan said the airport would be used for humanitarian purposes.
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