■ POLITICS
Chen nominates audit chief
President Chen Shui-bian (陳水扁) yesterday nominated Vice Auditor-General Lin Ching-lung (林慶隆) to head the Ministry of Audit, pending confirmation by the legislature. The Presidential Office said Chen assigned First Bureau Chief Yeh Wei-chuan (葉維銓) to deliver the request letter to the legislature yesterday afternoon. The letter was accepted by the legislature's secretariat. The confirmation requires the consent of a simple majority of the legislature.
■ ECONOMY
Acer founder is APEC envoy
Acer Group founder Stan Shih (施振榮) has been tapped by President Chen Shui-bian (陳水扁) as his special envoy to the APEC summit in Australia next month, the Presidential Office said in a press release last night. Shih's achievements in the computer sector have helped Taiwan find a niche in global technology, which qualifies him to represent Taiwan, the statement said. Shih built up his own brand name, Acer, and sold it to the world, increasing Taiwan's international visibility, the statement said. Shih was selected by Time as a "Hero of Asia" last year and was on Business Week's "Stars of Asia" list in 2004.
■ SOCIETY
First daughter returns home
First daughter Chen Hsing-yu (陳幸妤) has moved to her parents' official residence and now lives separately from her husband, who has been practicing medicine in the south since March, the Chinese-language Next Magazine reported. Chen refused to comment when approached by reporters yesterday as her bodyguards engaged in physical confrontations with TV cameramen outside her dental clinic. The latest issue of Next, which hit the newsstand yesterday, alleged that Chen began living with her parents about one or two weeks ago at the request of President Chen Shui-bian (陳水扁). The report claimed the president was worried about his daughter's state of mind.
■ TRANSPORTATION
UK company to tap market
A UK-based helicopter company is looking to expand its business in Taiwan as the country slowly opens up its civil and corporate aviation market. AgustaWestland, which specializes in helicopters and related training, has tendered a bid for the National Airborne Service Corps' procurement of 12 helicopters to be used for search and rescue, disaster relief and emergency medical services. AgustaWestland sees Taiwan as a market with tremendous potential, although the expansion will be slow and steady, said Andrew Symonds, vice general manager of the company's sales in North Asia.
■ BUSINESS
EMG pans Arena decision
The scandal-ridden Eastern Multimedia Group (EMG) yesterday protested the Taipei City Government's decision to annul the company's contract to run the Taipei Arena, threatening to file a lawsuit against the city for unilaterally ending the contract. "It's illegal for the city government to annul the contract before the verdict of the first trial is announced," EMG general manager Lin Ker-mo (林克謨) said at a press conference yesterday at the arena. The city government announced on Tuesday it would annul the contract with EMG to run the Taipei Arena after EMG chairman Gary Wang (王令麟) was indicted on Monday for allegedly bribing city government officials to win the nine-year contract.
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