■ POLITICS
Let Hsieh decide, Chen says
Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) presidential candidate Frank Hsieh (謝長廷) is the person best qualified to choose his running mate, President Chen Shui-bian (陳水扁) said yesterday. Amid speculation that Chen favored former premier Su Tseng-chang (蘇貞昌) as a running mate for Hsieh, Chen declined to comment on a Hsieh-Su ticket. While Hsieh has said he would let the matter be decided by opinion polls, Chen said that he disagreed, as he believed Hsieh would make the best decision himself. Chen made the remarks during an inspection trip to Taichung City.
■ ENERGY
Wind-power cable planned
State-run Taiwan Power Co on Monday announced a plan to construct a 60km undersea electric cable linking Taiwan and offshore Penghu County as part of the company's efforts to secure supplies of wind-powered electricity between the two. The NT$14.68 billion (US$445 million) plan is undergoing an environmental impact assessment, a company spokesman said. The project would be completed in November 2012 if the assessment is finished by the end of this year, he said. Once the cable is in place, wind-powered electricity could be produced on a massive scale on Penghu, the spokesman said. The undersea electric cable would serve as a backup system, but one which the spokesman said had to be put in place in advance. Without a backup system, the island's power system would be compromised if the wind becomes unstable, leading to the possibility of a comprehensive shutdown, the spokesman added.
Globally, the Penghu area is one of the most suitable places for generating wind power, the spokesman said.
■ POLITICS
Schriver seeks latest facts
Former US deputy assistant secretary of state for East Asian and Pacific affairs Randall Schriver arrived in Taiwan on Monday for a five-day visit at the invitation of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs' (MOFA) Department of North American Affairs. Schriver hopes to obtain the latest information on the nation's political and electoral situation and will hold a press conference with local media tomorrow, MOFA spokesman David Wang (王建業) said. Schriver will visit the Democratic Progressive Party, the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT), the Taiwan Foundation for Democracy, the Environmental Protection Administration and other government departments. Christopher Griffin, a research fellow at the American Enterprise Institute, is accompanying Schriver.
■ CULTURE
Festival cancelation possible
An announcement by Ilan County Commissioner Lu Kuo-hua (呂國華) yesterday that the county's annual Children's Folklore and Folk Game festival would not be held next year drew fire from Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) Legislator Chen Chin-de (陳金德), who demanded that he consult with local travel companies and county councilors. Lu said that the decision had been made out of cost considerations, but that the county government would immediately begin working on a replacement summer activity. Chen, a legislator from Ilan, released a statement yesterday saying that the festival had a 12-year history and the decision to cancel it should not be taken so lightly. He said that he had not ruled out initiating a recall motion should Lu not reconsider his decision.
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