■ MEDIA
Mozzie downs presenter
A television presenter was hospitalized after a mosquito flew into her mouth, interrupting her live broadcast of a news program. The mosquito got so deep into Huang Ching’s (黃睛) mouth that it was stuck in her windpipe, touching off severe asthma, China Times media group said on Wednesday. China Television Co had to urgently put on a four-minute advert while it found a replacement presenter. “I never expected a mosquito to have such great power. It really gave me a bad day,” Huang said after recovering from last week’s encounter.
■ POLITICS
Hu rules out president run
Taichung Mayor Jason Hu (胡志強) ruled out the possibility of running in the 2012 presidential race and called for Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) solidarity during a speech on Wednesday in Kuala Lumpur. Hu stressed the ruling party must be united ahead of the Nov. 27 mayoral elections in five special municipalities. “The KMT must win at least three seats out of the five districts, and there is no room for doubt about that,” he said. Hu said a spate of high-profile shootings in Taichung in May could have a negative effect on the coming elections, but voiced confidence that voters would support him. Hu also said that cross-strait unification was “a remote issue” unless Taiwan’s living standards were fully guaranteed. Hu and Taichung County Commissioner Huang Chung-sheng (黃仲生) of the KMT are in Malaysia promoting Taiwanese fruit.
■ MILITARY
Control Yuan censures MND
The Control Yuan yesterday censured the Ministry of National Defense (MND) for failing to conduct upper-air weather observations for three to four months last year because of improper management of equipment. Control Yuan members Huang Wu-tzu (黃武次) and Chao Chang-ping (趙昌平) said upper-air observations play an important role in supporting the military’s combat readiness and missions. Despite this, the Air Force failed to properly manage the spare parts for related equipment. With insufficient radiosonde transmitters and spare parts, the Air Force Weather Wing was unable to conduct upper- air weather observations for three to four months, the Control Yuan’s investigation found. The Control Yuan said that Air Force observation stations did not even have radiosonde transmitters for use during Typhoon Morakot, which devastated parts of southern Taiwan in August last year. They added that although the ministry’s Combined Logistics Command noted a shortage in upper-air observation equipment purchased from the US, it was authorized only to ask for price compensation in conformity with procedure, rather than acquiring the necessary equipment to make up for the shortfall.
■ TRAVEL
Israel may ease visa rules
Republic of China passport-holders might soon be able to enjoy visa-free access to Israel, the country’s representative to Taiwan, Rafael Gamzou, said yesterday. He said negotiations for a mutual visa-waiver policy have been going on for more than 18 months and that a favorable decision is expected to be made soon. “This is a matter of principle. I don’t see why our Taiwanese friends should not be welcome to Israel on a visa-free basis,” he said. If the negotiations are successful, Israel could be the fourth country to grant Taiwanese visa-free entry since last year. He said approximately 10,000 Taiwanese travel to Israel annually, mostly on Christian pilgrimages, while Taiwan receives “a few thousand” Israeli visitors each year.
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