■POLITICE
SEF chair returns to work
Straits Exchange Foundation (SEF) Chairman Chiang Pin-kung (江丙坤) has returned to work following prostate surgery last week. Chiang said yesterday he felt fine and it was a “small problem.” He emphasized, however, that he still needed to return to the hospital for check-ups. The foundation said Chiang discovered benign prostatic hyperplasia (an abnormal increase in the number of cells) during a regular physical check-up and his doctor suggested taking tissue samples.
■HEALTH
BNHI to study breast cancer
The Bureau of National Health Insurance (BNHI) will later this month study the feasibility of covering the costs of targeted therapy for early-stage breast cancer under the national health insurance system, a BNHI official said yesterday. Sheen Mao-ting (沈茂庭), a BNHI official in charge of reviewing medical claims, made the comment in response to a call by several legislators for national health insurance to cover this type of treatment. Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) Legislator Huang Chao-shun (黃昭順) said that targeted therapy for early-stage breast cancer, which aims to slow the growth of cancer cells, costs 20 times less than the medical bills for treating such cancers if they spread. In many countries, targeted therapies are covered by national health insurance. “Why can’t Taiwan do the same?” she asked. KMT Legislator Lin Hung-chih (林鴻池) said that the government’s tax revenues from a hike in the health surcharge on cigarettes are expected to be more than NT$20 billion (US$600,000) per year, while the cost of covering targeted medicines for early-stage breast cancer would be only NT$900 million. He said he hoped the BNHI would soon agree to cover the payments for that type of treatment.
■POLITICS
Taipei skips repainting
The Taipei City Government yesterday decided not to paint the KMT emblems back on the old east gate of the city, also known as Jinfu Men, after Democratic Progressive Party Taipei City councilors slapped white paint over the blue-and-white emblem. The KMT emblems on two other historical gates — South Gate and Small South Gate — will not be repainted with white and blue colors, either, the Department of Cultural Affairs said. The department was criticized last month for taking advantage of repair work on the three gates to repaint the faded KMT emblems carved on the gates. Teng Wen-tsung (鄧文宗), a division chief at the department, said it decided to follow Article 21 of the Culture Heritage Preservation Act (文化資產保存法), which stipulates that any restoration work on national monuments should be done according to the monument’s original appearance.
■CRIME
Wang presses charges
Despite a lack of evidence, Wang Tzu-hao (王子豪), son of Shiatzy Chen (王陳彩霞), founder of the fashion brand of the same name, has pressed charges against his wife, Taichung County Councilor Wang Chia-chia (王加佳), and the private investigator she hired, for allegedly hacking at him with a knife, a Central News Agency report quoted an official from the Taipei City’s Sungshan Precinct as saying yesterday. Wang Tzu-hao accused his wife of responsibility for last September’s incident, in which an unknown suspect slashed at him in the streets of Taipei City. Wang Tzu-hao said the criminal was a private investigator hired by his wife to spy on him. Wang Chia-chia held a press conference yesterday and denied her husband’s claim.
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:
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
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