The Cabinet yesterday approved a proposal that would earmark NT$50 billion (US$1.56 billion) to a six-year plan to resolve a sedimentation problem plaguing Zengwun Reservoir (曾文水庫), Nanhua Reservoir (南化水庫) and Wushantou Reservoir (烏山頭水庫).
Minister of Economic Affairs Shih Yen-shiang (施顏祥) told a press conference following the Cabinet meeting that the three major dams in southern Taiwan were threatened by a significant increase in silt deposits after Typhoon Morakot hit the country last August.
The Water Resources Agency (WRA) said that 91 million cubic meters had accumulated in Zengwun Reservoir and 36 million cubic meters in Nanhua Reservoir after the typhoon, which together had amounted to the total storage capacity of Nanhua Reservoir.
In the Wushantou Reservoir, silt deposits have filled about 44 percent of its storage capacity, it said.
Shih said the draft statute drawn by the ministry would impose a series of prohibitions on development to preserve and restore the upstream part of the watershed areas of the three reservoirs.
If the legislature passes the bill, any new projects to build sediment storage dams should be compatible with the Aboriginal Basic Act (原住民基本法), and these areas would be made off limits to any road construction or expansion projects.
The Cabinet yesterday also approved a proposal by the Sports Affairs Council to promote baseball, which is reeling from a game-fixing scandal involving several players from different teams.
Prosecutors on Wednesday indicted 24 professional baseball players over their alleged involvement in match-fixing scandals.
Sports Affairs Council Minister Tai Hsia-ling (戴遐齡) said the council and the Ministry of Education had proposed not appointing players found guilty of involvement in gambling scandals as teachers or coaches in schools, as well as banning them from playing in the amateur baseball league for life.
Tai said that prosecutors would be stationed in playing fields when the baseball season starts late next month to prevent gangsters from influencing the games.
She added that the government would soon amend the Sports Lottery Issue Act (運動彩券發行條例) to impose heavier penalties on players involved in gambling scandals.
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