ELECTIONS
No e-mails from CEC
The Central Election Commission (CEC) yesterday asked the public to ignore any e-mails claiming to have been sent by the commission as it doesn’t send out public announcements via e-mail. Many people have recently received messages purporting to be from the commission asking whether the next presidential and legislative elections should be combined and held on the same day. “The CEC is still in the process of gathering public opinion through public hearings and opinion polls on the issue [on whether to combine the two elections] and has not yet made a decision,” a press release by the commission yesterday said. “We urge the public to ignore such e-mails if you receive them, and do not open them as they might contain a virus.” Following the last of five public hearings yesterday on merging the two major elections, council Chairwoman Chang Po-ya (張博雅) said yesterday that the council would hold a meeting on April 19 to discuss whether to combine the two elections and on which day they would be held.
EARTHQUAKES
Tremor rattles Hualien
A magnitude 4.7 earthquake struck Hualien County yesterday, according to the Central Weather Bureau. No damage or casualties were reported. The earthquake, which rattled eastern Taiwan at 12:22pm, struck 11km southwest of Hualien County at a depth of 23.2km, the bureau’s Seismological Center said. Because of its shallow depth, the quake reached a 6 on the Japan Meteorological Agency seismic intensity scale, the center said, but because it lasted for only 0.12 second, it did not cause any damage. The tremor was also felt in other parts of Hualien and some parts of Yilan and Nantou counties.
LEISURE
Taipei offers kids free visits
Elementary-school students from around the nation will enjoy free entrance to major attractions — including the Maokong Gondola and Taipei Zoo — on Monday, Taipei Mayor Hau Lung-bin (郝龍斌) said yesterday, inviting school kids to spend Children’s Day in the city. Young students can also visit the Taipei Astronomical Museum and Taipei Water Park for free on Monday by showing their ID cards or student ID cards. Hau said the city government initially planned to offer the benefit only to students in Taipei, but later decided to extend the benefit to primary school students around the country. The city government said parents who accompanied the students to those sites can also enjoy free entrance or special discounts.
HISTORY
Park unveils ‘peace bell’
A groundbreaking ceremony for a peace bell was held yesterday at the peace memorial park in Kinmen County. The bell represents Taiwan’s resolution to seek peace, officials said. Tsai Hsiang (蔡湘), chief secretary of the Council for Cultural Affairs, presided over the groundbreaking ceremony. Officials also buried artillery shells left behind from the Aug. 23 Artillery Battle of 1958 to symbolize the seeds of peace. The outlying island of Kinmen, which was also the scene of the Battle of Guningtou (古寧頭戰役) during the Chinese civil war in 1949, is the best place to install the bell to help Taiwan’s voice of peace to be heard around the world, Tsai said. According to the Republic of China Centenary Foundation, two bomb shells will be cast into the copper of the 2m high bell, which will be unveiled on Aug. 23 to mark the Republic of China centennial and commemorate the battle.
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