■ Foreign affairs
Aid sent to Philippines
Taiwan said yesterday it will offer US$300,000 in relief aid to the Philippines, where a powerful typhoon has left more than 1,000 people dead or missing. With the aid, the Taiwanese government hopes to contribute to the Philippines' rehabilitation and reconstruction needs, the Foreign Ministry said in a statement. Typhoon Durian hit Taiwan's southern neighbor on Nov. 30 and unleashed massive quantities of rocks and other volcanic debris from the slopes of the Mayon volcano, sending walls of mud and boulders onto helpless villages.
■ Politics
No Cabinet reshuffle: Cho
Presidential Office Deputy Secretary-General Cho Jung-tai (卓榮泰) yesterday said that President Chen Shui-bian (陳水扁) has no intention of reshuffling the Cabinet. "The president thinks that stability, including a continuation in policy and personnel matters, is what the country ought to pursue now in the aftermath of the elections," Cho said in response to a question posed by Democratic Progressive Party Legislator Huang Wei-cher (黃偉哲) at a meeting of the legislature's Budgets and Final Accounts Committee. Cho said that Chen had not mentioned any Cabinet reshuffle nor was it an issue that had been discussed in the Presidential Office.
■ Politics
DPP primary set for May
The Democratic Progressive Party's (DPP's) presidential primary has been tentatively set for next May, party Secretary-General Lin Chia-lung (林佳龍) said yesterday. However, a final decision on the primary's timetable and details will be made by the Central Executive Committee after soliciting opinions from party leaders and all sectors of society, Lin said. The secretary-general added that the question of whether the DPP primaries for next year's legislative polls and the 2008 presidential elections should be held simultaneously, as some members have suggested, was still up in the air. He said that producing a DPP presidential candidate early would not necessarily prevent the party's "heavyweights" from competing. Besides, he said, if a DPP presidential candidate were to be named too early, the candidate could become the target of smear campaigns and mudslinging by the opposition, adding that such a development would also be detrimental to the DPP administration's operations.
■ Society
Animals still suffering
People's attitudes toward animals has changed over time, especially in the last 10 years, but Taiwan still faces barriers that impede the practice of animal protection, academics said in an international forum yesterday. "Animal protection is a policy that cannot be delayed," said Chen Shei-saint (陳學聖), chairman of Taiwan's Animal Protection Association (APA) at the opening ceremony of the 2006 International Companion Animal Welfare Forum. The two-day forum, co-organized by the APA, the Life Conservationist Association and the Department of Veterinary Medicine at National Taiwan University, is taking place in Taipei with academics from 11 countries meeting in a "dialogue between Taiwan and the World." In a keynote speech, David Fraser, a Canadian professor who also works for the Office Internationale des Epizooties (OIE, World Organization for Animal Health), offered a global perspective on animal welfare. It is amazing how quickly people's opinion toward animals could change in 30 years, Fraser said, adding that the animal protection movement is looking for a more global reach in the 21st century.
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