■ TRANSPORT
Losheng partially saved
The Cabinet's Public Construction Commission yesterday decided in principle to keep 70 percent of the Losheng (Happy Life) Sanatorium intact. The commission made the announcement in a press release issued yesterday. To complete a proposed MRT extension and maintain 70 percent of the sanatorium, an additional NT$670 million (US$20 million) will be spent, the commission said. The agreement "was the best solution" to preserve most of the historical site while allowing completion of the MRT construction as soon as possible, the statement said.
■ TRANSPORT
Cabinet defends stance
The Cabinet yesterday defended its policy on the Suao-Hualien Freeway in the face of a large-scale protest. People First Party Legislator Fu Kun-chi (傅崑萁) led some 5,000 Hualien residents to the Executive Yuan to petition the government to build the freeway as soon as possible. Cabinet Spokeswoman Chen Mei-ling (陳美伶) told Fu and his fellow protesters that the voices of the people of Hualien had been heard, but the issue of whether to build the freeway depended on a final environmental evaluation. "We will not do anything before the results of the environmental evaluation are received," she said. Fu and his group then continued their protest at the Landis Hotel. The hotel's owner, Stanley Yen (嚴長壽), has publicly opposed the idea of building the freeway.
■ EDUCATION
Local governments appeal
Taipei City Government, along with seven other local governments, sent an application to the Judicial Yuan yesterday requesting an interpretation of the Constitution to defend their rights to standardize school textbooks. The city government made the move after the Ministry of Education lashed out at the plan, which conflicts with a ministry policy allowing for the adoption of a variety of textbooks at schools, and ordered a ban on any changes to the textbook policy by local governments. Taipei Mayor Hau Lung-bin (郝龍斌), who promised to standardize textbooks during his campaign to reduce the burden on middle school students, yesterday said the city government would continue with the plan regardless of the interpretation. Taipei County, Taoyuan County, Taichung County and City, Chuanghua County, Nantou County and Chiayi City joined Taipei City, all pan-blue local governments, requested the interpretation. Hau denied that it was a political issue but acknowledged that no local authorities ruled by pan-green parties supported it.
■ SAFETY
Evacuation exercise planned
The Taipei City Government will hold an evacuation exercise next week at Taipei Railway Station to enhance the ability of government and private units when responding to emergencies. The Taipei City Police Bureau, chief planner of the exercise, said that prior to the exercise, scheduled to begin at 8:30am next Thursday, rehearsals will be held on Monday and Tuesday between 9:30am and noon. Certain areas used for the different rail services provided by the Taiwan Railway Administration, the Taipei Rapid Transit System and the Taiwan High Speed Rail will be closed, but train operations will not be affected, the police said. Some roads around the station will be blocked off, while traffic controls will be enforced on others.
■ HEALTH
Vaccine tests show promise
A vaccine against enterovirus 71 (EV71) has proved effective in tests on rodents and rabbits, providing protection coverage of 85 percent, the Center for Disease Control (CDC) said yesterday. CDC officials said that after another series of animal experiments have been completed, the vaccine was expected to enter the clinical testing stage on humans and then mass production. An outbreak of EV71 in 1998 claimed the lives of 78 children, prompting the center to embark on the research and development of an EV71 vaccine. CDC Vaccine Center director Liu Ding-ping (劉定萍) said that the CDC vaccine was the first successful one of its kind. Because of limitations in the CDC's research capacity, the center has decided to transfer its findings to the National Health Research Institute to continue the research.
■ SPORTS
Yankee to promote games
Baseball hero Wang Chien-ming (王建民) will attend an international news conference at the Taipei Economic and Cultural Office in New York on Monday to speak on behalf of the 2009 World Games to be hosted by Kaohsiung, an official said yesterday. Chen Yi-heng (陳以亨), chief executive officer of the Kaohsiung Organizing Committee (KOC) of the games, said that he and the chairman of the International World Games Association, Ron Froehlich, will promote the international sporting event together with Wang at the news conference. He said there will be at least 120 US athletes coming to Kaohsiung City for the games and that the KOC hopes to draw the attention of the US public so that they might come to Kaohsiung City for the event.
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