■ POLITICS
Hsieh campaigns online
Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) presidential candidate Frank Hsieh (謝長廷) has launched an official campaign Web site to attract young voters. Hsieh's top campaign manager Yeh Chu-lan (葉菊蘭) said the Web site features video and photos of tourist attractions such as scenery from beaches in Kaohsiung and the Chiku (七股) wetlands in Tainan County. It also features a famous documentary film depicting the daily life of three elderly rice farmers in Tainan County. Yeh invited Internet users to visit the site and look at Hsieh's campaign information and other video and audio files.
■ POLITICS
Chu apologizes to Su's mom
Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) Legislator Chu Fong-chi (朱鳳芝) apologized yesterday to Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) vice presidential candidate Su Tseng-chang's (蘇貞昌) mother for saying that she had an affair with a veteran after her husband died. Chu asked Veterans Affairs Commission Minister Hu Chen-pu (胡鎮埔) whether he had heard a rumor about Su's mother having an affair during a National Defense Committee meeting on Wednesday. Chu then corrected herself, saying the person she meant to refer to was former DPP chairman Yu Shyi-kun's mother. Chu said her comment was not inappropriate, but in response to criticism from DPP lawmakers, offered an apology.
■ AVIATION
New problem for problem jet
A China Airlines jet developed a fresh technical problem yesterday while on a flight home from Japan where it had undergone repairs on a crack on its fuselage, officials said. The Boeing 737-800 struggled to take off from the airport in Saga, southern Japan, and returned with what its captain called a glitch in its airspeed indicators, the officials said. "There was a discrepancy between the reading of the captain's airspeed indicator and that of the co-pilot's," China Airlines Tokyo office spokesman Tadahiro Akiyama said. There were no people on board other than the captain and the co-pilot, he said. "It took much [more] time for the aircraft to take off for reasons not immediately clear. It lifted up on the edge of the runway," said Rui Mitsuma, a transport ministry official based at the airport. Public network NHK broadcast footage showing the plane crushing a lamp at the end of a 60m overrun strip stretching from the 2,000m runway. A team of engineers from the airline's head office had inspected and repaired the fuselage.
■ DIPLOMACY
Chen to meet with allies
President Chen Shui-bian (陳水扁) will depart for the Marshall Islands on Thursday to attend the second Taiwan-South Pacific leaders' summit scheduled to take place the following day, Chen Chi-mai (陳其邁), deputy secretary-general of the Presidential Office, said yesterday. Chen Chi-mai said that after the summit, the president and leaders of the six Pacific allies -- the Solomon Islands, Kiribati, Marshall Islands, Palau, Tuvalu and Nauru -- will sign the "Majuro Declaration" in which the leaders of the allies will express their support for Taiwan's bid to join the UN. Majuro is the capital of the Marshall Islands. The summit meeting will review various cooperation projects in the "Palau Declaration" signed during the first summit to strengthen their friendship through cooperation in the areas of economic development, capacity building, society and culture, Chen Chi-mai said.
■ CRIME
Illegal gunmaker caught
Police in Taitung County infiltrated an underground firearm factory in the county late on Thursday night, nabbing the owner and a batch of guns and tools. Taitung police said at a news conference yesterday that after months of investigation and surveillance, the police raided the garage owned and run by Lai Chien-chuan (賴建全), arresting him on the spot and confiscating converted gas rifles, pistols, semi-finished converted Beretta guns, ammunition and tools for weapon modification. Lai, 33, claimed that he is "addicted" to firearms of all kinds and purchased these weapons online to satisfy his personal hobby, police said.
■ DIPLOMACY
MOFA thanks US House
The Ministry of Foreign Affairs (MOFA) expressed gratitude yesterday to the US House of Representatives for unanimously passing a resolution urging the executive branch to supply Taiwan with sufficient defensive weapons and services. The US House passed Resolution 676 on Wednesday, declaring that the US, in accordance with the Taiwan Relations Act, should make articles and services for self-sufficient defense capacity available to Taiwan. MOFA deputy spokeswoman Yeh Fei-bi (葉非比) said yesterday that the resolution shows the House's support for Taiwan's determination to upgrade its defensive capabilities.
■ POLITICS
Lawmakers doubt Ma
Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) lawmakers yesterday alleged that Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) presidential candidate Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九) lied when he said he was unaware of a sign that contained a pun using an aggressive Chinese swear word. The KMT took down the sign on Thursday, after it drew the ire of many who said that is seriously insulted Taiwanese women. But DPP Legislator Wang Shu-hui (王淑慧) said yesterday that the KMT also produced T-shirts bearing the slogan, which can be bought online. Wang said the KMT started selling the T-shirts at its Sept. 15 rally to promote the KMT's UN referendum proposal. "I doubt that Ma didn't know about the slogan in advance," Wang said. "He owes the public an apology."
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
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
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