■ Earthquake
Quake jolts east coast
A moderate earthquake measuring 5.3 on the Richter scale struck off the east coast early yesterday morning, with no initial reports of any damage or injuries. According to the Seismology Center of the Central Weather Bureau (CWB), the earthquake occurred 8.7km underground at 1:28am, with the epicenter located 41.1km northeast of the Suao earthquake station in Ilan County. The tremor could be felt across northern and central Taiwan, registering an intensity of 3 in Ilan, 2 in central cities and 1 in Taipei, CWB seismologists said. The Suao earthquake station recorded a magnitude 4.9 tremor on Wednesday at the same location at a depth of 8.3km. Another quake of magnitude 5 was recorded on Dec. 14 at a depth of 28.8km underground at almost the same location.
■ Politics
Ma issues campaign support
Days after a group of Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) legislative aides launched a signature drive to recall Keelung Mayor Hsu Tsai-li (許財利), KMT Chairman Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九) finally offered his support to the campaign. The aides' initiative to recall Hsu, who has been convicted on corruption charges, met opposition from local branch members of the KMT on Saturday when they conducted a signature drive at Keelung Railway Station. In response to concerns about the party's passiveness on the issue, Ma yesterday said the KMT supported the aides and will help to push for the campaign. "The party's stance is firm and clear. We support the aides' campaign for a recall motion, and our position will not change," Ma said yesterday after attending a municipal event in Taipei. KMT Spokesman Huang Yu-cheng (黃玉振) later told a press conference that the party had ordered the KMT's Keelung branch to fully cooperate with the aides' signature campaign, including providing locations for signature collection.
■ Labor
Foreign workers lose out
Council of Labor Affairs (CLA) Chairman Lee Ying-yuan (李應元) said on Saturday that contracts for foreign laborers working on Kaohsiung's mass rapid transit (MRT) system would not be extended. Lee said that the foreign laborers would be asked to leave after their contracts expire at the end of the year. The nation's top labor official made the remarks while he was inspecting a construction site for the MRT system, to examine whether it was being run according to safety regulations. The Kaohsiung Rapid Transit Corp (KRTC) filed an application with the CLA late last month to prolong the contracts of more than 700 foreign laborers still working on the system until late next year. A KRTC spokesman said the number of migrant workers on the project had decreased from 1,717 to 774, mainly as a result of a Kaohsiung City Council demand that the KRTC give priority to local laborers.
■ Tourism
Tour routes unveiled
The National Youth Commission yesterday unveiled 20 travel routes designed to help young people further their understanding of the nation. The "Learning Taiwan Through Travel" program will offer students the opportunity to observe the nation and its people, officials said. The routes will be offered during the winter vacation next year and are divided into four categories: Exploring Taiwan's Art and History, Observing Local People's Livelihood, Discovering Taiwan's Ecosystem and Learning About Taiwan's Indigenous People.
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