■ SOCIETY
Chen Hsing-yu curses media
Former president Chen Shui-bian’s (陳水扁) daughter angrily denounced the media yesterday. “Why are you following me all day? My dad is no longer the president.” Chen Hsing-yu (陳幸妤) said angrily. “What have I done wrong? I’m just a doctor. Are you going to follow me like this until I drop dead?” She made the remarks when reporters approached her outside her dental clinic in Taipei City’s Neihu District (內湖) to ask for comment on a report in yesterday’s Chinese-language Apple Daily. The report said that Chen Hsing-yu had three traffic violations in two days and could face fines of up to NT$11,700. Two accompanying pictures showed her driving through red lights. Chen Hsing-yu yesterday said she drove through the red lights in an attempt to escape paparazzi, but then realized she had fallen into their trap. She also complained that people called her clinic pretending to be patients and filmed her using hidden cameras.
■ JUSTICE
Prosecutors summon Chen
Prosecutors said yesterday that they would summon former president Chen Shui-bian (陳水扁) as a witness in their investigation into Sino Swearingen Aircraft Corp’s (SSAC) embezzlement case. Prosecutors have prohibited former SSAC chairman Kuo Ching-chiang (郭清江) from leaving the country. Prosecutors said that since Kuo was appointed by Chen and certain documents indicated Chen might have been involved in policymaking, prosecutors decided to interview him as a witness. Since its establishment in 1996, Taiwan has invested about US$600 million in SSAC, but the company only won regulatory approval to build business aircraft in late 2005. So far it has only delivered one plane. Prosecutors are trying to determine if irregularities in management could have led to the substantial deficit it now faces.
■ POLITICS
Court annuls election win
Miaoli District Court yesterday annulled Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) legislator Lee Yi-ting’s (李乙廷) legislative election win. The district court said Lee could appeal the ruling to the Taiwan High Court, whose ruling would be final. Lee was indicted by Miaoli prosecutors in late January on charges of vote-buying during the Jan. 12 legislative elections. Prosecutors asked the Miaoli District Court to sentence Lee to two years in jail and impose a fine of NT$2 million (US$62,000). The case is still pending in the district court. Prosecutors also filed a civil lawsuit with the district court, and that ruling was handed down yesterday afternoon. Prosecutors suspect Lee and two campaign workers made 16 donations to several temples in the Miaoli area to secure the votes of the temples’ managers and devotees.
■ POLICY
Extra budget on the way
The Cabinet is today set to approve an extra budget of NT$120 billion (US$3.9 billion) to fund government policies. Around NT$114 billion will help local governments complete infrastructure projects, while about NT$12 billion will compensate public transport and taxi drivers for increased fuel costs. The budget proposal was made after President Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九) promised in the presidential campaign to revise the budget. The Directorate General of Budget, Accounting and Statistics presented the proposal to the Cabinet; it will now be sent to the legislature for review. Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) local government heads have attacked the Cabinet’s decision to allocate NT$58.3 billion to each city and county according to population size, but the Cabinet said the test was impartial and would address local government needs.
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