■POLITICS
Wu undergoes surgery
Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) Chairman Wu Poh-hsiung (吳伯雄) underwent artery stent placement surgery yesterday morning at Taipei Veterans General Hospital because of coronary heart disease. The surgery was successful and the chairman is to be discharged from hospital today, the KMT said. His condition was discovered during a regular health checkup on Wednesday after Wu presided over the party’s central standing committee. Wu said in a telephone interview with TVBS yesterday that the surgery took less than an hour and that his condition would not affect his work.
■TRANSPORTATION
Airport volume drops
Taiwan Taoyuan International Airport ranked No. 14 in passenger traffic volume among the 138 international airports in the Asia Pacific region last year, down from No. 13 in 2006, the Ministry of Transportation and Communications said yesterday. The country ranked No. 6 in freight traffic volume, the same as in 2006. Meanwhile, the airport saw its global ranking in freight traffic volume fall from No. 13 to No. 15 last year. Regarding the growth percentage in freight traffic volume among the top 20 international airports in the world last year, Taiwan Taoyuan Airport had dropped 5.5 percent. Ministry statistics from January to August this year showed that Taichung International Airport registered the strongest growth in passenger traffic volume, with a 45.8 percent increase over the previous year.
■TRAVEL
Visa waivers granted
Starting on Wednesday, Polish and Slovak nationals can enter the country for 30 days without a visa. The waiver will also extend to Hungarian nationals starting next month, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs said yesterday. Anne Hung (洪慧珠), head of the ministry’s Department of European Affairs, said the move extended Taiwan’s goodwill toward EU countries in the hope the EU would reciprocate. Taiwan offers the 30-days visa-waiver privilege to 33 countries, including 22 in the EU group.
■MEDIA
Layoffs at ‘China Times’
As part of a corporate reorganization project, the China Times Group (中時集團) said yesterday it would lay off all 10 reporters at its online news.chinatimes.com news outlet and some of its 40 editors, Central News Agency (CNA) reported yesterday. In addition, the group will merge China Times online — an independent entity under the group — with Info Times, an Internet-based news service provider within the group, next month. China Times online was launched in 1998, making the Chinese-language China Times the first print media in Taiwan to publish its news content on the Internet.
■CRIME
Chen case widens
Prosecutors yesterday added Tsai Ming-chieh (蔡銘杰) and Tsai Ming-che (蔡銘哲) to the list of defendants in the investigation into former president Chen Shui-bian’s (陳水扁) alleged money-laundering. Tsai Ming-chieh and Tsai Ming-che are brothers of Tsai Mei-li (蔡美利), a former classmate of former first lady Wu Shu-jen (吳淑珍). The three Tsais and their spouses were summoned by the Special Investigation Panel yesterday for questioning for their alleged role in the case. After six hours of interrogation, the prosecutors filed a request to detain Tsai Ming-che.
■CRIME
Judge delays verdict
Taipei District Court Judge Huang Cheng-hui (黃程暉) yesterday postponed his ruling in the trial of Wu Shih-tsai (吳思材), a key suspect in the Papua New Guinea (PNG) diplomatic fraud scandal, and called for additional hearings. “We decided to hold back the process for the verdict and organize more hearings for the case,” Huang said in court, adding that former minister of foreign affairs James Huang (黃志芳) would be summoned again for the hearing at 10am on Monday. Wu and his partner, Ching Chi-ju (金紀玖), who were commissioned by the ministry in 2006 to help broker a deal for the establishment of diplomatic ties with PNG, allegedly embezzled the US$29.8 million intended as aid for the Pacific country. While Ching remains on the run, Wu, taken into custody by prosecutors on May 6, was indicted on Sept. 5 on charges of forging a bank statement and making a false report to the police that he had been threatened by an unidentified gunman.
■ENVIRONMENT
Noise bill clears first hurdle
A legislative committee yesterday approved a draft amendment to the Noise Control Act (噪音管制法) that would entitle households constantly exposed to noises from nearby public transportation systems to special subsidies. Owners of residential property near expressways, freeways, railways, mass rapid transit systems and airports can apply for subsidies to install noise-deterrent equipment in their buildings, the amendment states. Factories will be given 90 days to reduce their noise levels after they are reported, it said. Recreation and business locations will be given 30 days, construction sites four days and public address systems 10 minutes to lower their noise levels, it said.
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