■ POLITICS
KMT expels Tainan speaker
The Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) yesterday revoked the party membership of Tainan County Council Speaker Wu Chien-bao (吳健保) following his indictment in a professional baseball match-fixing scandal. Banciao District prosecutors on Wednesday indicted 24 people for fixing games in exchange for money and sex. Prosecutors have also requested a nine-year prison sentence and a fine of NT$50 million (US$1.6 million) for Wu, accusing the council speaker of fraud and involvement in organized crime. “Wu's behavior has damaged the KMT’s reputation and violated party regulations. His membership should be revoked immediately,” KMT’s Disciplinary Committee said in a statement yesterday.
■ SOCIETY
AIT reports missing person
The American Institute in Taiwan (AIT) is asking the public to help locate a missing US citizen. According to AIT, 62-year-old Fu Duong Vuong (王補養) was last seen on Feb. 5 leaving a relative's home in Taipei City's Wenshan District (文山). She was wearing a light blue shirt, black pants, black shoes and carrying a red umbrella. Fu’s family said she has early stage Alzheimer's Disease and did not have any medication or money with her when she went missing. Anyone who has information on Fu can call the Taipei City Immigration unit at (02) 2389-2650 or report it to the local police station. For details, see www.ait.org.tw.
■ POLITICS
US' China policy 'changing'
The US government has adopted an increasingly tougher stance on its dealings with China, said Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) Legislator Hsieh Kuo-liang (謝國樑), who had just returned from a visit to the US. Hsieh said yesterday that many of the US lawmakers and academics he met during his visit said there had been “subtle” changes in Washington's China policy since US President Barack Obama's moderate and low-key approach toward China had not received a positive response from Beijing, as evidenced by its attitude on international issues such as the value of the Chinese currency and climate change. After being criticized as being “too weak,” the Obama administration has recently become tougher toward China, Hsieh said, citing Obama's approval late last month of an arms sales package to Taiwan and the possibility that he might meet with the Dalai Lama. “Subtle changes are taking place among the triangular Taipei-Washington-Beijing relations, and Taiwan should try to strike a strategic balance in the relationship to pursue its best interests,” Hsieh said.
■ CRIME
Pirates release trawler
Somali pirates yesterday freed a Taiwanese trawler they had used as a “mother ship” to attack other vessels during a 10-month ordeal that three crew did not survive, a maritime watchdog said. The Win Far 161, hijacked on April 6 last year near the Seychelles in the Indian Ocean, was freed for a “relatively small ransom,” said a statement by Ecoterra International, an environmental NGO monitoring maritime activity in the region. The Win Far was the longest-running case of Somali piracy, with two Indonesians and one Chinese among the original crew of 30 dying during their last month of captivity, Ecoterra said. “The three died of malnutrition, disease and neglect over the course of the last month,” Ecoterra said, adding that the hostages’ respective authorities did not provide any assistance in attempts to facilitate humanitarian relief.
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:
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