■ SOCIETY
Mayor commends late `hero'
Kaohsiung Mayor Chen Chu (陳菊) extended her condolences on Monday to the family of a man who died two days ago of heart and lung failure after helping police officers chase down two teenage suspects. Hsieh Ching-chuan (謝清泉), 57, and his son joined a chase of two suspected thieves early last Saturday after hearing police sirens in their neighborhood. After pursuing the two teenagers for 20 minutes, Hsieh stopped to catch his breath, while his son continued the chase. About 10 minutes later, he heard his son shout that he and the police officers had caught the two suspects in an alley, Hsieh dashed 200m to his son, only to collapse in front of him. He was rushed to the Kaohsiung Municipal United Hospital but was pronounced dead on arrival. Chen presented NT$50,000 in cash to the family as a token of the Kaohsiung City Government's appreciation for the man's heroic act.
■ TRANSPORTATION
No change in MRT schedule
Kaohsiung Mayor Chen Chu (陳菊) said yesterday that the city's mass rapid transit system (MRT) would open as scheduled at the end of the year. Chen made the remarks amid reports that the inauguration of the the MRT system might be delayed because a section of the 28.3km Red Line was only about 80 percent complete. Chen admitted that the section was behind schedule, but said that the Kaohsiung Rapid Transit Corp, which is in charge of the construction, was making all-out efforts to get back on schedule. The MRT system will have two lines -- the Red Line and the Orange Line. The 14.4km Orange Line, which suffered a tunnel collapse near Station 7 and water seepage in Station 1, is not expected to open until the end of next year.
■ POLITICS
Hsieh supports amendments
Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) presidential candidate Frank Hsieh (謝長廷) yesterday endorsed amendments to the Referendum Law (公投法) proposed by a political pressure group. The Nuke-4 Referendum Initiative Association, which visited Hsieh yesterday, hoped the legislature would approve the changes before the session ends on Jan. 31. The association is seeking to lower the threshold for initial approval of a referendum proposal from 0.5 percent of eligible voters -- or 80,000 voters -- in the last presidential election to 100 voters. It also wants to lower the threshold for the second stage review of a referendum proposal from 5 percent of eligible voters -- or 800,000 voters -- to 1.5 percent, or 240,000 voters. In addition, the association proposed the abolition of the Referendum Review Committee and the lowering of the number of voters required to make a referendum valid from 50 percent to 25 percent.
■ MILITARY
Handshakes will do
The Ministry of National Defense (MND) said late on Monday that it would ask boot camp squad leaders to welcome new recruits with a handshake rather than a hug. The announcement came after several legislators questioned Minister of Defense Lee Tien-yu (李天羽) about the military's "hug-hug" policy during an interpellation session earlier on Monday. The ministry later issued a press release saying it had conducted a careful study before implementing the "hug-hug" policy on Oct. 1. As "a handful" of recruits were "not used to being hugged" or were "too shy," the ministry decided to replace the hugs with handshakes starting on Monday, the press release said.
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:
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
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