■ HOUSING
Public rental plan unveiled
Taipei City will redouble efforts to increase the availability of public rental housing over the next 10 years, hoping that 5 percent of all available housing in the city will be for public rental by 2020. Taipei Mayor Hau Lung-bin (郝龍斌) said on Friday that 0.65 percent of the city’s housing stock is currently used for public rental housing — the highest ratio in the country but still low compared with Western countries — adding that he hoped the rate could reach 5 percent, as in the US. Hau said the city government was planning to build 200 public rental units of 50m² each at six locations by the end of 2014. The rental fee per unit would be NT$10,000. The city will also release houses obtained from private construction companies taking part in urban renewal projects or other joint development projects for public rental, he said. The city government also intends to renovate idle school buildings, or use old market places to build public rental homes, he said.
■ CRIME
Official seeks tape’s release
Taichung City Councilor Huang Kuo-shu (黃國書) of the Democratic Progressive Party yesterday urged police to make public the surveillance tape of a crime scene in which alleged gang leader Weng Chi-nan (翁奇楠) died in a shower of bullets on May 28. Revelations on Tuesday that four police officers were at the scene — but failed to intervene — have caused controversy and sparked public anger. Huang said the surveillance tape should be made public to help clear doubts about the shooting and allegations of questionable ties between the police officers and underground figures. Asked for comment, Taichung Police Chief Frank Chiu (邱豐光) said the decision was up to the investigators. “Whether to make it public depends on the investigators’ professional judgment,” he said. Chiu, who filled the post on Thursday following Hu Mu-yuan’s (胡木源) resignation over the case, denied allegations by Huang that there was a fifth ranking officer at the scene. Huang has claimed sources told him a fifth officer was caught by security camera.
■ TEA
Nantou focuses on branding
Tea growers in Nantou County said they were planning to create a clearer image for their tea by launching a brand named after Sun Moon Lake (日月潭). Chen Chao-wang (陳朝旺), head of Nantou County Government’s Department of Agriculture, said that while the county’s eight townships produce 62 percent of the nation’s tea, tourists are often unable to tell which tea is from Nantou because the townships use their own branding. Chen said local farmers’ associations had agreed to create an umbrella brand called “Sun Moon Lake Tea.” The county will hold a packaging design contest, with a NT$30,000 cash prize and a medal awarded to the winner. Tea growers still have the option of joining the brand or continuing to market their product separately.
■ CULTURE
CCA mulls China offices
The Council for Cultural Affairs (CCA) is assessing the possibility of opening branches in China to better serve Taiwanese companies dedicated to the cultural innovation industry amid more frequent cross-Taiwan Strait exchanges, an official said yesterday. Johnson Chiu (邱正生), deputy CEO of the Taipei Culture Foundation, said that although the plan was still on the drawing board, the CCA could follow in the footsteps of the quasi-official Taiwan External Trade Development Council by opening offices in major Chinese cities and stationing officials there.
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