■POLITICS
Session to begin on Feb. 23
Legislators across party lines reached a consensus yesterday to begin the spring legislative session on Feb. 23. On the opening day of the new session, the legislature will invite Premier Wu Den-yih (吳敦義) and other Cabinet officials to give administrative reports and answer questions in a general assembly. The legislature will also start the process for the confirmation of Huang Shih-ming (黃世銘), the deputy justice minister who was nominated by President Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九) to become state prosecutor-general after the new session begins. The Legislative Yuan’s justice and interior committees will first review Huang’s qualifications and capabilities and then lawmakers will vote on his confirmation.
■DIPLOMACY
Group touts visa-free status
A group of Taiwanese legislators currently on a visit to Rome asked Spain to support visa-free privileges for Taiwanese visitors to the EU. Citing the UK as an example, Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) Legislator Lin Yu-fang (林郁方) said the number of Taiwanese visitors to the UK increased by 40 percent during the six months after the UK granted Taiwanese visitors visa-free entry last March. Lin, a member of the group of legislators representing the Taiwan-Spain Parliament Friendship Group, said the number of Taiwanese visitors to Spain — one of the most popular European countries among Taiwanese — would also greatly increase if the country were to grant Taiwanese visitors visa-free entry. The number of Taiwanese visitors to Europe posted a continuous drop between 2005 and 2008 — from 281,022 in 2005 to 225,023 in 2008, figures compiled by the Ministry of the Interior showed.
■DIPLOMACY
Mission plants rice in Haiti
A technical mission of the Taipei-based International Cooperation and Development Fund (ICDF) stationed in Haiti has donated US$50,000 and purchased 50 tonnes of Haitian grown rice to aid post-quake refugees, chief of the technical group, Carlos Hsiang (向水松), said yesterday. Hsiang said the rice, with its “Taichung-shien No. 10” strain from Taiwan, was planted by local Haitian farmers on a 3,000 hectare farm in the Artibonite region with the mission’s assistance. Purchasing locally cultivated produce or goods to aid quake survivors is the best form of assistance for Haiti’s people, Hsiang said, because farmers will be given an outlet for their harvests and businessmen a market for their products. Artibonite is a major grain-producing region in central Haiti, suited for planting grains.
■HEALTH
DOH urges swine flu shots
The Department of Health (DOH) yesterday urged the public to get vaccinated against A(H1N1) influenza as a precaution against any new outbreaks during the Lunar New Year holiday, but added that the second wave of the epidemic has tapered off. Getting A(H1N1) flu shots is crucial to preventing the spread of the virus, DOH Deputy Minister Chang Shen-chwen (張上淳) said, adding that no new hospitalized A(H1N1) cases have been recorded recently because of the national vaccination program that was launched late last year. Asked whether the vaccine was safe for pregnant women, Chang said it was, adding that the Influenza Advisory Committee had agreed at a meeting last week that pregnant women should get the vaccine.
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
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