■CRIME
DPP ‘incites tensions’
Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) Legislator Chang Hsien-yao (張顯耀) said yesterday that the recent assassination threats posted by Web users against President Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九) and his daughters were the result of “perennial ethnic tensions” incited by the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP). Chang said police must investigate the threats to ensure the president’s safety. KMT Legislator Wu Yu-sheng (吳育昇) urged DPP Chairperson Tsai Ing-wen (蔡英文) to publicly discourage such behavior. “Taiwanese society should show its maturity and tolerance regardless of whether the person threatened is a politician or not. No one is qualified to call on others to assassinate anyone for any reason,” Wu said.
■POLITICS
‘Taiwan Corner’ gets German
Pro-Taiwan Danish online publication Taiwan Corner announced yesterday it would start offering news about Taiwan in German. Michael Danielsen, chairman of Taiwan Corner, said in an e-mail that the front-page of the newsletter would be translated into German. The online publication is in English, Chinese and Dutch. Danielsen said the objective was to reach out to more countries by using the local language. A press release was sent to the German media, Danielsen said. The Web site can be accessed at www.taiwancorner.org/.
■ANIMALS
City pushes for pet implants
Kaohsiung City’s Bureau of Economic Development yesterday said it would order pet stores to ensure that every dog and cat receive an ID chip implant before being sold. Liu Hsin-cheng (劉馨正), director-general of the bureau, told reporters that pet breeders and pet stores with legal permits that failed to add the implant would be fined between NT$40,000 and NT$200,000 in accordance with the Animal Protection Act (動物保護法). Chu Chia-te (朱家德), director of the Municipal Institute for Animal Health, said, pet owners showed up at the animal shelter everyday looking for their pets and regretted not having their pets receive the implant. Chu called on pet owners to remember to register their pets after the implant is added, saying that people who forget to do so could be fined between NT$3,000 and NT$15,000. Meanwhile, statistics from the institute showed that the city’s quota for the annual stipend for dog and cat neutering was almost full, with 46 spots remaining as of last Wednesday.
■EDUCATION
Hoklo test launched
National Cheng Kung University will launch the nation’s first general Hoklo (also known as Taiwanese) proficiency certification test this summer. Taiffalo Chiung (蔣為文), director of the university’s Center for Taiwanese Languages Testing, said the first test was scheduled for July 24, adding that it would be held annually in January and July. Chiung said the center, which helped the Ministry of Education create a Hoklo proficiency screening test, held a successful proficiency test for Tainan City and County, Chiayi City and County and Pingtung County. A total of 586 teachers from junior high and elementary schools in 11 cities and counties took the test on Nov. 14 , Chiung said. About 26 percent of test-takers were awarded advanced-level certificates, while 30 percent received high-intermediate-level certificates, Chiung said. Eleven percent received basic-level certificates and 29 percent received an intermediate level certificate.
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