President Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九) yesterday said he would soon call a meeting to address the nation’s water shortage problem because precipitation levels are below expectations and most reservoirs are silted up, lowering their capacity.
Ma did not provide any details about the meeting, but referred to the Zengwun Reservoir (曾文水庫) in Chiayi County, in which the water volume is at 39 percent of capacity, he said.
Although the government can transport water from the north to the south as an emergency measure, it is not a long-term solution, he said.
“We must come up with a comprehensive water economizing program,” he said.
Ma made the remarks while meeting the winners of this year’s National Golden Award for Architecture at the Presidential Office yesterday morning.
Ma also proposed subsidizing purchases of green buildings because their designers are eligible for government grants. Consumers purchasing home electronic devices with energy-saving functions also qualify for a NT$2,000 subsidy per item, he said.
Commenting on the country’s slipping ranking in a recent climate change performance report, Ma said the data used for the report was from 2007. Since he took office in May last year, Ma said he imposed the so-called “1-2-3” program at the Presidential Office to save water, electricity, gas and paper.
The program has helped the Presidential Office reduce its electricity usage by 10 percent, gas by 15 percent, water by 20 percent and paper by 30 percent, he 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