SOCIETY
Group pans referendum law
An association of liberal academics vowed yesterday to push for a legal amendment to give people greater rights to initiate a referendum in light of the government’s repeated rejection of a proposed referendum on the recent Taiwan-China trade pact. “Given its record, it was not surprising that the Referendum Review Committee rejected the most recent proposal,” the Taipei Society said in a statement. “However, it was deeply distressing to see people being barred again from exercising their rights.” For the third time, the Cabinet’s Referendum Review Committee on Wednesday turned down a proposal sponsored by the Taiwan Solidarity Union to hold a referendum on the Economic Cooperation Framework Agreement (ECFA) that Taiwan and China signed in June last year.
MILITARY
No troop withdrawal: Ma
President Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九) has turned down a proposal to withdraw troops from islets near Xiamen, saying that the move would be premature, an official said yesterday. Liao Wan-lung (廖萬隆), a senior member of the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT), recommended to Ma during a party meeting on Wednesday that Taiwan pull out troops stationed on the islands of Tatan (大膽) and Ertan (二膽) as an olive branch to Beijing. Ma dismissed the proposal, saying “the time is not yet ripe,” without going into detail, KMT spokesman Su Jun-pin (蘇俊賓) said.
ENERGY
Plant’s start date delayed
The date for the fourth nuclear power plant to begin commercial operations will be pushed back another year, mainly because of problems with the plant’s instrumentation and control system, state-owned Taiwan Power Company (Taipower) said yesterday. Work on the No. 1 generator at the plant is almost finished and it is being tested, the company said. The No. 1 generator was scheduled to begin commercial operations on Dec. 15 this year and the No. 2 generator in December next year. However, Taipower chairman Chen Kuei-ming (陳貴明) said in a meeting of the Legislative Yuan’s Economics Committee that the No. 1 generator probably will not begin commercial operations until late next year because there are still some problems with its instrumentation and control system that have not been fixed. This marks the fifth time that the date for commercial operations of the fourth nuclear power plant has been postponed.
SOCIETY
Web site shows car trends
A database that shows and interprets transportation statistics in Taiwan is now available online, offering the public customized information to improve their quality of life, the Ministry of Transportation and Communications said yesterday. For instance, the ministry said, statistics on the use of the country’s railways, freeways and high-speed rail during major holidays such as the Lunar New Year can help people make better travel plans. In addition to providing monthly information, the Web site helps users to better understand the meaning behind the numbers by converting figures into diagrams and charts. Forecasts and the background of certain trends provide a broader perspective on any given issue, the ministry added. For example, the ministry said, the Web site shows that the appreciation of the Japanese yen was a key factor in the 50 percent rise in the number of Japanese visitors to Taiwan in March last year compared with the previous month. The Web site is http://stat.motc.gov.tw/mocdb/stmain.jsp? sys=100.
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