■ MEDIA
EU documentary to be aired
A documentary focusing on European Commission President Jose Manuel Durao Barroso will be aired to give people of Taiwan an inside view of EU negotiation processes, a Taiwan-based EU official said yesterday. The 52-minute documentary titled At the Heart of Europe, which will be aired at 10pm on July 5 on the Public Television Service (PTS) channel, follows Barroso for six months. "Taiwanese can see what it is like working in a big international organization and see the daily negotiation process of the EU," said Frederic Laplanche, deputy head of the European Economic and Trade Office, the EU's representative office in Taiwan.
■ CORRUPTION
Task force to target bribery
Law enforcement officers will launch a crackdown on bribery on July 4, Minister of Justice Morley Shih (施茂林) said yesterday. Minister of the Interior Lee Yi-yang (李逸洋) and Government Information Office (GIO) Minister Shieh Jhy-wey (謝志偉) were also at the press conference at the GIO when the announcement was made. Shih said a new task force would be created to head a crackdown during the elections. The force will be introduced on July 4, with police officers following prosecutors' leads during the crackdown. In addition, Shieh said, the government would offer NT$15 million (US$455,000) to anybody whose tip leads to conviction in a bribery case during the presidential election and NT$10 million to tipsters whose contribution leads to a conviction on bribery charges related to the legislative election. Shih said a total of NT$350 million has been given to tipsters in the past few years and vowed that the identity of informers would be kept secret.
■ MILITARY
Officers gain promotion
Nine majors-general are to be promoted to the rank of lieutenant-general and vice admiral, and 33 colonels and captains will be made majors-general and rear admirals on the first of next month, the Ministry of National Defense said yesterday. The ministry has scheduled a ceremony to be held today to introduce the promoted personnel, but their promotions will not take effect until next month. In addition, the new military spokesman, Yu Szu-tzu (虞思祖), will be promoted to the rank of major-general. Yu is the youngest military spokesman in the nation's history and the first military spokesman from the Air Force in the past 40 years.
■ SOCIETY
Celebrations on schedule
Legislative Speaker Wang Jin-pyng (王金平) said yesterday that preparations for the Double Ten National Day celebrations were on schedule. Wang, who also serves as the chairman of the Oct. 10 National Day Organizing Committee, made the remarks after listening to reports by Vice Interior Minister Lin Chung-sheng (林中森) on the preparations. Noting that President Chen Shui-bian (陳水扁) had suggested on National Day last year that the event be scrapped this year, Wang said "all preparations are following set procedures." He said the committee has tentatively decided that the National Day celebration party be held at Zuoying (左營), Kaohsiung, while a National Day fireworks display will be held at Pingtung. "The committee will respect President Chen's decision on whether he wishes to attend the rally," Wang said, adding that the committee would have the final say on whether to hold National Day celebrations.
■ TOURISM
Park opens on Green Island
An ecological park featuring Formosan sika deer opened on Sunday on Green Island, attracting thousands of visitors who happened to be visiting the island over the weekend. The 23 hectare park was built by the local township administration and is being collectively run by several local tourism operators as part of efforts to boost the island's tourism. Huang Ching-an (黃慶安), a spokesman for Hoya Hot Springs Resort and Spa, a major shareholder in the park, said that the annual number of visitors to Green Island had reached 400,000, but most of them come to the island during the summer. In order to make the island an ideal tourist destination in all seasons, the locals decided to build the park, Huang said. The establishment of the park was also an attempt to boost the island's deer industry, Green Island Township Mayor Chen Chia-wen (陳嘉文) said, adding that the industry made a major contribution to the island's economy in the past.
■ ENVIRONMENT
Clean-up at Hohuanshan
A clean-up operation will take place on July 1 on Hohuanshan (合歡山), Nantou County, to remove trash left behind by tourists, the Taipei-based Good Neighbor Foundation announced on Sunday. The foundation, established by the 7-Eleven convenience store chain in 1999, has been holding "Clean Up the World" operations since 2001. A spokesman for the foundation said volunteers and members of the foundation will join servicemen from the Army's Airborne Command and retired paratroopers on July 1 to clean up the trash left by tourists on Hohuanshan and in the adjacent Taroko Gorge National Park. Hohuanshan is a favorite winter scenic spot, where visitors get a rare chance to see snow.
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