■ Politics
DPP doubts KMT data
The Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) yesterday urged Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) Chairman Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九) to clarify whether the KMT had unscrupulously profited when it sold the Center for Chinese Movies and Culture last year. The deputy director of the DPP's Policy Research and Coordinating Committee Lo Cheng-fang (羅正方), presented to a press conference a "restricted document" related to the assets sale. According to part of the wording of the document, the KMT may have had an under-the-table deal with the buyer when it sold the center, Lo said. He did not elaborate.
■ Society
Inaccessible buildings listed
The Ministry of the Interior expanded its list of public buildings that lack facilities for the disabled yesterday and Monday. On Nov. 23, Minister of the Interior Lee Yi-yang (李逸洋) cited 10 buildings that lack handicapped facilities. The list was further expanded yesterday to include museums, libraries and stadiums nationwide. In Taipei, the National Taiwan University of Science and Technology and Taipei Stadium were cited.
■ Language
Hakka ban criticized
Responding to recent reports that a Hakka inmate in a Yunlin County prison was prohibited by prison guards from speaking Hakka with his mother during visiting hours, the Council for Hakka Affairs issued a press release on Monday condemning the restriction. The council said in their statement that preventing the man and his mother from communicating in Hakka, which is their native language, violated the spirit of diversity that the Cabinet has sought to instill.
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