■ POLITICS
Chen lists files as classified
The Presidential Office informed the Taipei District Court yesterday through an official document issued by secretary-general Ye Chu-lan (葉菊蘭) that President Chen Shui-bian (陳水扁) had officially listed documents relevant to the state allowance fund case as classified files and asked for the return of the files. The Court is yet to make a decision on whether to return the files, but asked the prosecutors and defendants to express their opinions. Chen made a similar request in June. However, the Court has not delivered a ruling on the request. The presidential Office made the request based on the Council of Grand Justices' constitutional interpretation this June which stated the president has the authority to define what constitutes a national secret.
■ SOCIETY
Taipei opens up to big bikes
Motorcycles with an engine capacity of 550cc or larger will be permitted on 10 expressways in the city from November, the Taipei City Government said yesterday. The 10 expressways include Tiding and Huandong boulevards, the Shui-Yuan, Huanhe N and S, Xinyi and Zhoumei expressways, and the Jianguo, Civil Boulevard, Keelung Road and Xinsheng N Road overpasses. Traffic police said that they would clamp down on motorcyclists who violate traffic rules.
■ POLITICS
Anti-graft squad reconvenes
Former Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) chairman Shih Ming-teh's (施明德) anti-corruption campaign will celebrate the one-year anniversary of its sit-in protests with a gathering at Ketagalan Boulevard tomorrow. The gathering, meant to show continued opposition to corruption and President Chen Shui-bian (陳水扁), will begin at 6pm and last until midnight, campaign spokesman Jerry Fan (范可欽) said. It will feature a 40m-long totem pole made with candles, and Shih is scheduled to deliver a speech. Shih, who was the DPP chairman from 1994 to 1996 before leaving the party in 2000, launched the anti-graft campaign on Sept. 9 last year with a sit-in in front of the Presidential Office to call on Chen to step down.
■ SOCIETY
Nation ranked 49th-largest
Taiwan has the 49th-largest national population in the world, the Council for Economic Planning and Development (CEPD) on Thursday quoted a US demography source as saying. Figures publicized by the US Population Reference Bureau last month estimates Taiwan's population at 22.9 million this year, up 0.3 percent or 77,000 people year-on-year. CEPD officials forecast the nation's total population would shrink to 18.9 million by 2050 as a result of drastic social changes. They predict the population will reach its apex in 2019 with 23.3 million people, before gradually declining to 18.9 million by 2050.
■ CRIME
Two get bail in Rebar trial
Two executives who had been detained since July for suspected involvement in the Rebar Asia Pacific Group embezzlement case were yesterday released on bail, Taipei District Court spokesman Liu Shou-sung (劉壽嵩) said. Yi-feng Asset Management co-chairman Lawrence Wang (王令興) and general manager Lee Teh-yang (李德洋) were released on bail of NT$5 million and NT$1 million respectively. Liu said the court ruled it unnecessary to keep Wang and Lee in detention at the current stage of the trial, but prohibited them from leaving the country.
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