POLITICS
DPP mulls new candidate
The Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) will nominate a new candidate to replace former legislator Chien Chao-tung (簡肇棟) in January’s legislative elections, DPP Secretary-General Su Jia-chyuan (蘇嘉全) said yesterday. Chien resigned from his post on Tuesday after his involvement in a hit-and-run accident which killed a man. Chien has recommended that former DPP legislator Chiu Tai-san (邱太三), who is a professor at Asia University in Greater Taichung, run in Greater Taichung’s seventh district of Dali (大里) and Taiping (太平). Chiu expressed interest yesterday, saying that he would be available if the DPP wanted him to run. Ho Hsin-chun (何欣純), a Greater Taichung councilor, and former DPP legislator Hsieh Hsin-ni (謝欣霓) were also mentioned as possible candidates. The decision on who will replace Chien will be made later this week, Su said.
SCIENCE
Vehicle heads to Australia
A solar vehicle developed by National Kaohsiung University of Applied Sciences has been shipped to Australia to take part in the World Solar Challenge to be held on Oct. 16. The university said 20 team members of the solar car project titled “Apollo VI” would travel to Australia to compete in the 3,021km race with about 50 teams from 21 countries, including China, South Korea, Australia, the US, Japan, Canada and Germany. The solar vehicle is scheduled to arrive in Australia on Oct. 4. The vehicle is 4.3m long, 1.8m wide and 1.1m high, and it weighs about 130kg without taking into account the weight of the driver and the battery, said professor Ay Her-chang (艾和昌), the leader of the team. It uses silicon solar cells to comply with the race’s new regulations, Ay said. Although the silicon solar cells cost more than NT$1 million (US$33,700), the whole vehicle was built at a cost of just NT$5 million and it can reach a top speed of 120kph, he said.
WEATHER
Storm forms off Okinawa
Tropical Storm Roke formed in the Pacific yesterday, but whether it will hit Taiwan directly remains to be seen, the Central Weather Bureau said yesterday. As of 2pm yesterday, the center of Roke was 930km off the east coast of Okinawa. It was moving northwesterly at a speed of 19kph. The radius of the storm was about 100km. The bureau forecast that Roke was likely to continue moving close to the coast of Okinawa in the next few days and it has the potential to evolve into a stronger storm. It also forecast that the storm’s circumfluence would affect Taiwan on Saturday. The bureau also said there was another tropical depression near the east coast of Guam. The center of the tropical depression appeared to be stagnant, it said. The chances of showers are high in northeastern, eastern and southeastern parts of the nation, the bureau said.
POLITICS
Housing to be prioritized
Lawmakers are expected to put bipartisan amendments related to housing policy on the priority list of the legislature’s new session, which is scheduled to open tomorrow. The main bill to be reviewed during the session, which recesses on Dec. 14, will be the central government’s budget, but both parties hope they can also address housing bills that would require greater transparency in the real estate market. Legislators from the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) and the Democratic Progressive Party are expected to meet today to work out a prioritized list of bills to be considered during the three-month session.
Staff writer, with CNA
SCIENCE
Taiwan wins Olympiad
Taiwan and South Korea tied for first place at the fifth International Earth Science Olympiad, with Taiwanese secondary-school students taking home three golds and one silver in the competition in Italy, the Ministry of Education said yesterday. The four students from Taiwan were joined by 100 students from 26 countries at the competition, the ministry said. Taiwan has performed well since first taking part in the Olympiad in 2007 and has ranked at the top for the fifth consecutive year with a total of 15 golds and five silvers. To reward the students for their excellent performance, they will get recommendations for admission to college. Each gold medal winner will also receive NT$200,000, while the silver medalist will take home NT$100,000, the ministry said.
ENERGY
No France-like risk: AEC
The Atomic Energy Council (AEC) said yesterday that a nuclear site explosion like the one in France on Monday could not possibly happen in Taiwan. The explosion at the Centraco nuclear site occurred in an oven used to melt radioactive waste, the council said, citing France’s Nuclear Safety Authority. One person was killed and four injured in the explosion. The council said there are no such ovens at local nuclear power plants, but there is a small one at a research institute. After a safety assessment, the council’s Institute of Nuclear Energy Research was issued an operating license for the oven for research purposes, but it has not been in use in recent years because there has been no need for it, the council said. It added that it would continue to monitor the French nuclear incident and use it as a reference for safety improvements.
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