■ Politics
Hsieh's bid `no secret'
A group of Democratic Progressive Party lawmakers close to former premier Frank Hsieh (謝長廷) said yesterday that Hsieh's intention to run in the 2008 presidential election was an open secret. The lawmakers made the remarks following reports in yesterday's evening newspapers that said Hsieh had declared that he would run in the election. The reports said that Hsieh revealed his intentions when talking with Japanese correspondents in Taiwan on Wednesday. "Hsieh had discussed his willingness [to run for president] with certain lawmakers, and we all encouraged him to do so," said Lee Chun-yee (李俊毅), convener of the Welfare State Alliance, a DPP faction.
■ Education
MOE denies underinvesting
The Ministry of Education yesterday dismissed as "mistaken" a local media report which claims that the government is investing too little in education. Deputy Minister of Education Wu Tsai-shun (吳財順) said the country has increased spending on education every year and that education spending as a percentage of government annual expenditure is also higher than that of Japan, South Korea and the US. Wu pointed out that education spending accounted for 19.76 percent of the government's expenditures in 2002, compared with 10.6 percent in Japan, 12.7 percent in Britain, 15.2 percent in the US and 17 percent in South Korea. In the same year, Taiwan's education spending as a percentage of GDP stood at 4.6 percent, which was also higher than 2 percent in China, 3.5 percent in Japan, 4.2 percent in South Korea, and 4.4 percent in Australia and Germany, Wu noted.
■ Health
More women smoking
While the percentage of adult female smokers has risen to 4.54 percent, the smoking rate among junior high school girls is following closely behind at 3 percent, according to the results of surveys recently released by the Department of Health (DOH). The surveys, conducted by the DOH Bureau of Health Promotion, include one carried out last year among more than 20,000 students from over 200 junior high schools nationwide. The results were made public during an international conference on "women and tobacco hazards prevention" held in Taipei. The survey shows that among junior high students aged between 13 and 15, 5.74 percent are smokers, with the rates standing at approximately 3 percent among girls and 7 percent among boys.
■ Politics
Ma makes dreams come true
What kind of wish would a woman make if Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) Chairman Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九) was the one who could make it come true? In celebration of Women's Day, the Women's Department of the KMT has created a "women's wishing well" on the party's Web site. Women visiting the site are invited to make a wish, with one lucky participant being chosen to have her dream come true -- with Ma's help -- on March 8. So far, more than 400 wishes have been made, including requests for the KMT chairman to help bathe a baby or dance cheek-to-cheek. In response to the promotion, Ma said he would try his best to fulfill the women's dreams. "I have bathed babies in the past. Although it was 20 years ago, I think I can still do it," he said yesterday at Taipei City Hall. The deadline for entries is this Monday. For more information, visit www.kmt.org.tw/event/950301/index.html.
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