GOVERNMENT
Anti-corruption plan touted
An anti-corruption mechanism should be incorporated into regulations relating to government procurement programs, such as public construction projects, a government official said yesterday. To help develop a corruption-free public engineering environment, the Public Construction Commission will seek to have government procurement programs regulated by an anti-corruption law, Public Construction Minister Chen Chen-chuan (陳振川) said. Under the anti-corruption law, he said, companies taking part in public construction projects would be dealt with harshly if they are found to have bribed officials. Under the proposed law, banks would suspend loans and all financial aid services to companies or contractors that have been convicted of bribery, he added. The measures would boost the nation’s Transparency International ranking, in which it currently stands in 32nd position, he said.
DIPLOMACY
Foundation donates goods
Members of the Buddhist Compassion Relief Tzu Chi Foundation lent a hand in Guatemala yesterday, donating school supplies to local students and food to households, the Taiwanese embassy in the Central American country said. A total of 350 students received schoolbags, uniforms and notebooks, while 50 families received beans, corn, sugar and cooking oil in the city of San Jose Pinula, about 20km from Guatemala City. City Mayor Miguel Angel Solar expressed gratitude on behalf of the citizens and presented the Taiwan-based foundation with a testimonial. Ambassador to Guatemala Adolfo Sun (孫大成) and several other officials also took part in the event.
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