■ POLITICS
Legislature to begin session
The legislature yesterday resolved to begin its fall session by listening to Premier Wu Den-yih’s (吳敦義) administrative report on Friday. Legislators also agreed to hold extra plenary sessions on Oct. 11 and Oct. 13 and invite Wu, Directorate-General of Budget, Accounting and Statistics Minister Shih Su-mei (石素梅), Minister of Finance Lee Sush-der (李述德), Minister of Economic Affairs Shih Yen-shiang (施顏祥) and Council for Economic Planning and Development Minister Christina Liu (劉憶如) to brief the legislature and answer questions, Legislative Speaker Wang Jin-pyng (王金平) told reporters. He said the main focus of the session would be the government’s fiscal budget proposal for next year, its special budget for investment in public construction works next year and a special budget request to prevent flooding.
■ EARTHQUAKE
Small quake rattles east
The Central Weather Bureau said a magnitude 5.2 earthquake struck off the east coast yesterday. No casualties, damage or a tsunami were immediately reported. The bureau said the quake hit at 11:17am and was centered 35km from Hualien County.
■ EDUCATION
Character site goes online
Taiwan has released its official version of an online learning program for traditional Chinese characters and an English version for people whose mother tongue is not Chinese, the Ministry of Education said on Sunday. The new version features the stroke orders of 4,808 frequently used characters and bopomofo, a Mandarin phonetic system used only in Taiwan. They come with audio files, helping students to learn traditional Chinese more efficiently, it said. The new version updates a trial version that was released two years ago, the ministry said. The new version will allow those who do not know traditional Chinese to use Hanyu Pinyin to search for characters, it said.
■ CULTURE
Top pianist coming to Taipei
Award-winning Chinese pianist Lang Lang (郎朗) will visit Taiwan to give a piano recital in Taipei next month, playing the same repertoire he performed for an album at the famous Musikverein concert hall in Vienna in February. The live recording was the 28-year-old’s first album since joining Sony Music Entertainment as an exclusive artist this year. The pianist has been described as “the hottest artist on the classical music planet” by the New York Times.
■ SOCIETY
Soy products stored poorly
The Consumer Protection Commission yesterday said inspections of vendors of vacuum-packaged soy products found that 11 percent did not properly store their products. The commission instructed local governments to conduct surprise inspections of 71 supermarkets, retail chains, traditional markets and food stalls that sell vacuum-packaged soy products nationwide. Officials found that eight outlets did not properly store the foodstuffs as instructed by the Department of Health, which requires that all vacuum-packaged, ready-to-eat foodstuffs that are not dried or completely sterilized at approved facilities be refrigerated or frozen during shipping and retail. Only food products that are thoroughly sterilized before being vacuum-packaged can be stored or displayed at room temperature. The commission has issued warnings to the eight outlets that failed to comply and ordered improvements to be made, or they would face fines of between NT$60,000 and NT$300,000.
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