■ POLITICS
Lee Teng-hui turns on Chen
Former president Lee Teng-hui (李登輝) has broken ranks with president Chen Shui-bian (陳水扁), saying he was wrong to back him in 2004 and urging voters to oust Chen's party from office. Lee, who threw his weight behind Chen's bid for a second term four years ago, told young people in Taipei on Saturday that "we chose the wrong person, and now we are being punished," the Chinese-language United Daily News reported. The former president urged the nation not to vote for the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) in next Match's presidential election. Lee, who was president from 1988 to 2000, warned that if the public continue voting for the DPP then the country would be "finished," but he did not endorse another candidate. "I have never seen any other country like Taiwan where more than 10 ministers have been arrested on charges of graft in less than eight years," he told the newspaper.
■ EDUCATION
Translation exam held
The Ministry of Education held its first ever certification exam for Chinese-English translators on Saturday and yesterday at National Taiwan University in Taipei. Officials said the ministry hopes the exam will become a standard translation appraisal system that will elevate the professional image of translators. Of the 881 people who registered for the exam, 302 planned to take both the translation and interpretation tests, officials said, adding that those who passed would receive a certificate and would be recognized by the government as translators. Those who pass the first stage of the interpretation exam on Saturday will be eligible for the second stage exam on Jan. 6, with those passing both being granted a certificate.
■ ENVIRONMENT
Drink less water, Lu says
Vice President Annette Lu (呂秀蓮) yesterday urged people to drink less bottled water, or stop buying it altogether as part of efforts to protect the environment. Lu said people should carry their own canteens or water bottles with them when going out to work, school or on a day trip. Noting that the production of each liter-sized PET bottle requires 17.5 liters of water, Lu said she has no idea whether consumers are drinking water or petroleum when they are consuming bottled water. Lu said there are roughly 6.3 billion people in the world, but "we have only one Earth," which prompted her to advocate a drive to encourage people to "worship heaven, treasure the Earth and love the people." She said more than 270,000 tonnes of raw materials, and 18,000 barrels of crude oil are processed worldwide annually to produce plastic water bottles. If each person in Taiwan consumed 48 PET bottles of drinking water a year, the nation would be responsible for 1.1 billion PET bottles, she said.
■ DIPLOMACY
AIT chairman arrives
American Institute in Taiwan (AIT) Chairman Raymond Burghardt arrived in Taipei on Saturday evening for a four-day visit, diplomatic sources said yesterday. This is Burghardt's third visit since he assumed his post in February last year. He last visited Taipei in mid-June. The main purpose of his trip is to gain first-hand information about next month's legislative elections and meet with Democratic Progressive Party presidential candidate Frank Hsieh (謝長廷) and his Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) counterpart Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九).
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