A bill demanding the removal of anti-personnel mines from the nation's outlying islands of Kinmen, Matsu and Dong Yin within seven years was enacted in the legislature yesterday, a move expected to meet the long-term wishes of residents plagued by landmines for some 50 years.
Under the Act Governing Management of Landmines (
A resolution appended to the bill demanded the MND prioritize areas for the disposal of mines by consulting with the local governments of Kinmen County and Lienchiang County to meet with the local development needs.
PHOTO: CNA
The government planted over 100,000 landmines during the Battle of Kuningtou in 1949 and the Aug. 23, 1958 artillery bombardment, as a precaution against invasion by communist Chinese troops of Kinmen, Matsu and Dong Yin.
While landmines include anti-personnel mines and anti-vehicle mines, only the former are subject to the bill, as the MND said that the latter should continue to be used for military purposes.
The bill also restricts the MND's future use of landmines by stipulating that they can only be used in wartime.
If the project cannot be completed in seven years, the MND should request an approval from the Executive Yuan for an extension. The bill also stipulates that if military personnel or civilians suffer injuries as a result of "negligence in mine removal operations," they will be entitled to compensation.
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