■ECONOMY
Voucher notices on the way
The National Immigration Agency yesterday said it has sent out notices to all foreign citizens married to Taiwanese nationals and those Taiwanese citizens without a registered household to pick up their consumer vouchers, which will be made available on Jan. 18. Qualifying individuals who have not received the notice within three working days can go to www.immigration.gov.tw to check on progress by entering their ARC number, or go to the nearest city or county government offices for further assistance.
■CROSS-STRAIT TIES
Chiang visits China
Straits Exchange Foundation Chairman Chiang Pin-kung (江丙坤) yesterday embarked on a four-day visit to China to attend a forum with China-based Taiwanese businesspeople. The trip will take Chiang to Guangdong and Jiangsu provinces. Chiang said the purpose of his trip was to listen to the opinions of China-based Taiwanese businesspeople. China’s Association for Relations Across the Taiwan Strait (ARATS) has invited local provincial government officials to attend the forum, Chiang said, adding that he would also meet his Chinese counterpart, ARATS Chairman Chen Yunlin (陳雲林). Chiang said he would make suggestions on addressing the problems of Taiwanese merchants during his meeting with Chen and local government officials. He hoped both China’s central and local governments could provide more assistance to China-based Taiwanese merchants to help them ride out the economic downturn, Chiang said.
■POLITICS
KMT approves nominee
The Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) yesterday approved the nomination of Chen Luan-ing (陳鑾英), the wife of Lee E-tin (李乙廷), to run in the legislative by-election in Miaoli County in March after Lee’s status was invalidated last month because of vote-buying. KMT Spokesman Lee Chien-jung (李建榮) told reporters after the party’s Central Standing Committee that the committee approved the nomination unanimously and agreed that the party should make an all-out effort to assist Chen in her campaign. Lee E-tin was elected as a first-term lawmaker on Jan. 12 last year, but lost the seat on Dec. 10 when the Taiwan High Court’s Taichung branch rejected his appeal against a May 28 Miaoli District Court ruling that annulled his election on vote-buying charges. Lee was the first member of the current legislature to lose his seat. The loss is not expected to have much of an impact on the lawmaking body, where the KMT and its allies hold nearly three-fourths of the seats. The by-election is scheduled for March 14.
■HEALTH
Kinmen screens travelers
Health officials on Kinmen heightened their alert against avian flu yesterday, requiring all passengers coming in through the “small three links” route to have their body temperatures checked. The Kinmen office of the Centers for Disease Control set up a check point on the wharf for the ferry services between Kinmen and Fujian to measure the body temperature of each incoming passenger from China after being informed that a human case of avian flu resulted in the death of a 19-year-old woman in Beijing two days ago. Wang Ho-shun (王賀舜), director of the office, told reporters that health officials would isolate any incoming passengers who had developed a fever and would find out who they had been in contact with. Chinese authorities have informed Taiwan, as well as the WHO, of the confirmed case of the H5N1 strain of human avian influenza.
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