The Cabinet yesterday approved a bill designed to set up regulations to bring supervision to the implementation of foreign aid projects to prevent problems that have frequently overshadowed the country’s foreign relief efforts.
“In the 21st century, the role our country plays should not only be as a practitioner of a democratic system but also as a participant in humanitarian services,” Executive Yuan Spokesman Su Jun-pin (蘇俊賓) yesterday quoted Premier Wu Den-yih (吳敦義) as saying in a directive issued at the meeting.
MECHANISM
Should the draft bill pass the legislature, the government will be required to create a mechanism for planning international cooperation projects, conducting assessments, monitoring implementation and appraising performance, to make sure that funds for foreign-aid are spent appropriately.
In accordance with the bill, a fair and objective third party could be invited to assess whether an aid project proposed by the government fits in with the receiving country’s development strategy if it is a public construction program of more than US$5 million and is fully financed by the government.
The Cabinet yesterday also approved an amendment to the Fisheries Act (漁業法) that prohibits owners of fishing vessels from operating if their fishery licenses or licenses for fishing vessels are revoked.
Individuals who violate the regulation will be fined between NT$60,000 (US$1,860) and NT$300,000.
ILLEGAL FISHING
If the amendment clears the legislature, it will help the government’s crackdown on illegal fishing vessels, which frequently carry out unlawful fishing activities in international waters, Su said.
Meanwhile, Su said that Wu had asked the Department of Health (DOH) to expand the provision of methadone maintenance therapy after the DOH said that it had proved to be an effective treatment program.
NEW CASES
The DOH report showed that the number of new cases of HIV/AIDS had fallen by 48 percent from 3,384 in 2005 to 1,747 last year, thanks in part to the therapy, Su said.
Su said that the treatment helped reduce the number of heroin addicts contracting HIV/AIDS by 84 percent, from 2,381 in 2005 to 379 last year.
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