■ POLITICS
Su questioned about money
Former premier Su Tseng-chang (蘇貞昌) appeared yesterday at the Taiwan High Court Prosecutors' Office's Special Investigation Section to be questioned about a NT$100,000 political donation which prosecutors suspect was a bribe. Su was called in by prosecutors probing allegations that the Chinese Medicine Association had bribed lawmakers to support an amendment to the Pharmaceutical Affairs Act (藥事法). The questioning lasted approximately two hours. As he left the prosecutors' office, Su said that he was merely helping prosecutors clarify things. "The money was a political donation. I came to help prosecutors clarify dates and specific details about the donation. They understand that I am innocent," he said.
■ POLITICS
CEC members reappointed
President Chen Shui-bian (陳水扁) reappointed all 16 members of the Central Election Commission (CEC) yesterday for another three-year term. A statement from the Presidential Office said that commission chairman Chang Cheng-hsiung (張政雄) would continue to head the group. The commissioners' tenure expired last Saturday. By law, the commission must install 11 to 19 members for a three-year tenure.
■ CROSS-STRAIT TIES
Taiwanese vanish in PRC
Almost 100 Taiwanese businesspeople have died and nearly 300 gone missing over the years in China, while their firms are increasingly hit by sudden legal changes, Mainland Affairs Council Chairman Chen Ming-tong (陳明通) said yesterday. The 94 deaths and 339 disappearances in China since it opened up to Taiwanese investment were among 1,878 incidents reported by Taiwanese investors, Chen said. About 1,160 incidents involved personal safety, he said. "These statistics may just be the tip of the iceberg, and they show that strengthening the protection of Taiwanese and their property is something we can't go easy on," Chen said. Local governments in China have also sprung a number of sudden legal changes on factory owners recently, such as costly new environmental regulations, he said. However, Andrew Yeh (葉春榮), president-elect of the Taiwanese Businesses Association in Dongguan,China, said that China was generally not hazardous for Taiwanese businesspeople. "Whatever the problems are, it's still a good investment," Yeh said. "Only if I were to lose money would I not go there."
■ SOCIETY
CTOT plans birthday parties
The Canadian Trade Office in Taipei (CTOT) will host a series of events in Kaohsiung to celebrate Canada's 140th birthday. The celebration will begin on Tuesday at the Kaohsiung Film Archive, where the CTOT will host the First Canadian Animation Festival in Kaohsiung until July 12. The office is working with the Kaohsiung Film Archive to organize a half-day animation seminar to connect Canada's experience with Kaohsiung's animators. The seminar will feature David Baas, a Canadian animation director who won an Oscar last year for his excellence in animation, and Alex Liao, a digital artist of animation software company Softimage. As Kaohsiung is home to many young Canadians, the office will hold a party at a pub run by Canadians next Wednesday. The final event will be a "Canada Village" in front of the Film Archive on June 30, which will offer Canadian food and drink, building products, as well as information on education and tourism opportunities.
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