■ POLITICS
lin vouches for candidates
former democratic progressive party (dpp) chairman lin i-hsiung (泓義雄) yesterday endorsed dpp presidential candidate frank hsieh (謝長廷) and urged the public to support him. lin said it would be bad for the country's political development if the central government does not have any representatives from the dpp, particularly after the chinese nationalist party (kmt) won the legislative elections last month. when asked whether he would campaign for hsieh, lin said it was unnecessary because he quit politics in 2000 and left the party in 2006. lin made the remarks after attending a memorial service held for his family members in ilan county yesterday. lin's six-year-old twin daughters and his mother were murdered on feb. 28, 1980, while he was in jail for participating in democracy demonstrations in kaohsiung in december 1979. the attack is believed to have been politically motivated, as it occurred on the anniversary of the 228 incident.
■ POLITICS
yang named as gpwb chief
lieutenant general yang tien-hsiao (楊天廣), the commander of the kinmen defense command, has been designated as head of the general political warfare bureau (gpwb) a ministry of national defense (mnd), news release on wednesday said. yang is due to succeed chen kuo-hsiang (陳國祥), who will be transferred to serve as a presidential strategy adviser. the assignment will take effect tomorrow and yang will be promoted to the rank of general. it was reported that chen's job transfer came as a result of his role in the bungled defense company taiwan goal, but the mnd would not confirm the reports. the mnd said the move was a normal personnel reshuffle. meanwhile, yu sy-tue (虞思祖), director of the office of military spokesmen, will be appointed to another post, with the vacancy to be filled by chih yu-lan (池玉蘭), now deputy head of the office. chih will be the country's first female military spokesperson. her new assignment will take effect tomorrow.
■ POLITICS
commission head named
premier chang chun-hsiung (張咨雄) on wednesday appointed former democratic progressive party (dpp) lawmaker lin tai-hua (泓岱樺) as chairwoman of the national youth commission, succeeding cheng li-chun (頜礪君). cheng resigned earlier this month to campaign for dpp presidential candidate frank hsieh (謝長廷). lin, born in 1970, was first elected to the legislature in 2001 in kaohsiung county, obtaining the second highest vote in the country. she won re-election in 2004, but lost to a kmt challenger in last month's legislative election.
■ AID
medical team helps in india
a taiwanese medical team arrived in darjeeling in the indian state of west bengal, on wednesday morning to provide medical services despite ongoing riots. the 13-member team, organized by the state-run international cooperation and development fund, included doctors, pharmacists and nurses and was expected to help about 500 local people daily. the group was scheduled to head to india's himalayan state of sikkim yesterday and stay there for three to five days before returning to darjeeling and moving on to new delhi on march 15, team leader chen chih-fu (陳志福) said.
■ CRINE
Police crack fake drug ring
Police in Kaohsiung and Taichung raided a factory that produced counterfeit drugs and its distribution network on Wednesday, seizing fake aphrodisiacs in three different packages and arresting four suspects. A spokesman for the Kaohsiung City Police said a suspect surnamed Lin, 42, and his two accomplices were charged with violation of the Pharmaceutical Affairs Act (藥事法) for selling fake aphrodisiacs under the "Love Strong" brand name. Another suspect surnamed Chen, 45, who was in charge of the manufacturing, was also taken into custody and will be prosecuted. A police investigation showed that the fake drugs could cause side effects such as low blood pressure, headaches, vomiting, dizziness and blurred vision.
■ CRIME
Second TV series on Taiwan
Viewers in 270 million homes in 166 countries will soon be able to learn more about the nation's culture and biodiversity on the National Geographic Channel. Next month, the channel will take its viewers on a discovery tour of Taiwan's transgenic and fluorescent pigs, black bears, Kung Fu, fighting crickets and conservation of the horseshoe crab, a "living fossil." The series of five one-hour documentary films -- ?co-produced by National Geographic and the Government Information Office -- is designed to showcase the nation's customs, biodiversity and culture. Broadcast in 34 languages, the first film in the series, Super Pigs, airs on Sunday in English. The first series, produced in 2003, comprised four episodes on the nation's cockroaches, butterflies, racing pigeons and beliefs and aired in late 2005. A third series is in production.
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