■ POLITICS
Chen to make party decision
President Chen Shui-bian (陳水扁) said yesterday he will announce today whether he would accept the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) chairmanship. He will make the announcement before leaving for the Marshall Islands for a leader's summit. The DPP chairmanship has been vacant since former chairman Yu Shyi-kun resigned on Sept. 26 over the controversy concerning the party's "normal country" resolution, which was passed at the DPP National Congress on Sept. 30. Yu was in favor of a version incorporating stronger rhetoric on key issues that some party members, including DPP presidential candidate Frank Hsieh (謝長廷), feared could scare off moderate voters. Hsieh has canceled all campaign activities since Sept. 28, the 21st anniversary of the founding of the DPP. His campaign office has said he is sick and has a sprained ankle, adding that he had become ill in part because of the stress of seeking a compromise over the resolution. Hsieh said he would resume public appearances once the chairmanship issue has been settled.
■ POLITICS
Chen to name new nominees
President Chen Shui-bian (陳水扁) will name four new nominees for the Council of Grand Justices to fill the four positions left vacant after four of his eight nominees were rejected by the legislature last month, Presidential Office Deputy Secretary-General Cho Jung-tai (卓榮泰) said yesterday. Those four nominees, known for their affiliation with the pan-green camp, were voted down by the pan-blue majority in the legislature. "The president has the duty of making four other nominations," Cho said. "We hope the legislature reviews their qualifications in an open-minded way and doesn't humiliate them for their political stances." Cho said the president had not yet decided whether to renominate 27 people for the Control Yuan.
■ CRIME
`Pants fugitive' arrested
Chang Shih-chieh (張世傑), a fugitive suspected of manipulating stock prices, was arrested by Taichung prosecutors and Taipei police at the Far Eastern Plaza Hotel in Taipei yesterday. Chang had escaped capture last Tuesday night when Taichung prosecutors and police went to his Taipei residence to arrest him. He had told them he would go with them once he had changed his pants. The police waited outside his bedroom for a while before calling a locksmith to open the door. They found he had escaped via a secret passage. Chang was yesterday taken to Taichung for questioning.
■ HEALTH
Flu vaccine promoted
The Department of Health urged the elderly and children under two years of age to make use of the free influenza vaccine now available at hospitals. Shih Wen-yi (施文儀), deputy director of the department's Centers for Disease Control, said the center estimated that only 360,000 of those older than 65, or 14.6 percent of the elderly, had received the free shots this year, compared with around 25 percent last year. Among children aged between six months and two years, 19,000 had received flu shots. The figure represents approximately 9 percent of children in that age group, down from 15 percent in the same period last year. Shih attributed the overall 30 percent decrease in the number of people receiving free shots to reports questioning the safety of the mercury-containing flu vaccines. He said research has shown that the vaccine, which contains minimal amounts of thimerosal, was not harmful to humans.
FLU SEASON: Twenty-six severe cases were reported from Tuesday last week to Monday, including a seven-year-old girl diagnosed with influenza-associated encephalopathy Nearly 140,000 people sought medical assistance for diarrhea last week, the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) said on Tuesday. From April 7 to Saturday last week, 139,848 people sought medical help for diarrhea-related illness, a 15.7 percent increase from last week’s 120,868 reports, CDC Epidemic Intelligence Center Deputy Director Lee Chia-lin (李佳琳) said. The number of people who reported diarrhea-related illness last week was the fourth highest in the same time period over the past decade, Lee said. Over the past four weeks, 203 mass illness cases had been reported, nearly four times higher than the 54 cases documented in the same period
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