■ LOCAL GOVERNMENT
Kaohsiung mulls proposal
Kaohsiung City Government is mulling whether to propose that the city council reconsider its rejection of the city government’s merger plan with Kaohsiung County, Kaohsiung Mayor Chen Chu (陳菊) said yesterday. Chen said the city government regretted the council’s decision to reject the plan during a vote on Monday, adding that the rejection had made it impossible for the city and county to complete their planned merger at the same time as Taichung City and County next year. The central government requires that local governments wishing to become special municipalities by the end of next year to submit their merger plans to the Ministry of the Interior and the Executive Yuan for review by the end of this month.
■ FESTIVALS
Races attract record entries
The annual Taipei Dragon Boat Festival will take place from May 28 to May 30 at Dajia Riverside Park, with a record 200 local and foreign teams competing this year, the Taipei City Government said yesterday. The festival will feature a series of traditional rituals, including dragon eye dotting, a zongzi (rice dumpling) making activity, an egg-balancing contest and other ceremonies, in addition to dragon boat races during the three-day event at the park. Taipei Mayor Hau Lung-bin (郝龍斌) said yesterday that the city government would invite President Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九) and Presidential Office staff to compete with the Taipei City Government’s team in the festival. Ma had planned to lead the Presidential Office team in last year’s festival, but later withdrew from the race because of security concerns. Hau said the city government also welcomed other local governments to form dragon boat teams and join the race.
■ SPORT
Athletes from far and wide
More than 1,000 athletes from Taiwan and 15 countries around the world will participate in the annual International Hualien Cup Triathlon at Liyutan Lake (鯉魚潭) next weekend. To finish the course, athletes must swim 1.5km, bike 45km and run 10km. Chang Jenn-chyan (張振乾), director of the East Rift Valley National Scenic Area Administration, said this year’s race had attracted participants from Japan, Germany, Australia, Canada, France, South Korea and 10 other countries. The Men’s and Women’s champions from last year, Wei Cheng-chan (魏振展) and Wang Yi-wen (汪旖文), as well as Government Information Office Minister Su Jun-pin (蘇俊賓) and former Taipei deputy mayor King Pu-tsung (金溥聰) will also join the race this year, he said. Forty-three of the participants this year are women.
■ AGRICULTURE
COA shows off nuts
The Council of Agriculture (COA) yesterday unveiled two new types of peanuts — the Tainan 15 and the Nankai 183, with the former being disease-resistant, and the latter containing high amounts of anthocyanins, a natural antioxidant. “To reduce the impact of imported peanuts on local farmers, we developed the Tainan 15 to cater for local tastes, while the Nankai 183 has an increased amount of anthocyanins compared with other peanuts,” said Chen Kuo-hsien (陳國憲), a COA researcher at the Tainan District Agricultural Research and Extension Station. Peanuts are one of Taiwan’s major legume crops, Chen said, adding that annual revenue is about NT$3 billion (US$100 million). The new peanuts can be grown in the spring and the fall, and yield in about 100 to 120 days, he said.
■ DIPLOMACY
Alliance to push WHO bid
The Taiwan United Nations Alliance (台灣聯合國協進會) said yesterday that 22 of its members would promote Taiwan’s bid for WHO membership at this year’s World Health Assembly (WHA) meeting from May 18 to May 27 in Geneva. Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) Legislator Twu Shiing-jer (??, a former health minister and vice chairman of the alliance, said the group would voice Taiwan’s bid for formal membership in the WHO and promote its “one Taiwan, one China” position during the event. Twu said the WHA invitation for Taiwan to participate compromised Taiwan’s sovereignty because it was the fruit of a secret deal between the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) and the Chinese Communist Party.
■ CRIME
Chen’s bookkeeper testifies
Former president Chen Shui-bian’s (陳水扁) bookkeeper, Chen Chen-hui (陳鎮慧), failed to account for some missing expense records when questioned in court yesterday. She was called to testify in a trial involving former presidential aides alleged to have helped Chen Shui-bian embezzle from the “state affairs fund.” Chen-hui yesterday said she used to produce monthly expense reports and give them to former Presidential Office deputy secretary-general Ma Yung-cheng (馬永成). She said she presumed Ma handed the reports to Chen Shui-bian, but she did not know whether Chen Shui-bian read them. Asked about missing records in the accounts she kept, she said: “I don’t know what happened [to the missing reports].” When Ma’s lawyer asked Chen Chen-hui why she did not hand over the money from the fund to Chen Shui-bian, she told the court no one ever told her to give the money to the president. Rather, “[the former] first lady would tell me to bring the money to the presidential residence,” she said.
FLU SEASON: Twenty-six severe cases were reported from Tuesday last week to Monday, including a seven-year-old girl diagnosed with influenza-associated encephalopathy Nearly 140,000 people sought medical assistance for diarrhea last week, the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) said on Tuesday. From April 7 to Saturday last week, 139,848 people sought medical help for diarrhea-related illness, a 15.7 percent increase from last week’s 120,868 reports, CDC Epidemic Intelligence Center Deputy Director Lee Chia-lin (李佳琳) said. The number of people who reported diarrhea-related illness last week was the fourth highest in the same time period over the past decade, Lee said. Over the past four weeks, 203 mass illness cases had been reported, nearly four times higher than the 54 cases documented in the same period
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
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