Former president Lee Teng-hui (李登輝) has embarked on a three-day trip to central Taiwan where he is to visit areas hit by the 921 earthquake, which killed more than 2,400 people, 13 years ago this month.
The 89-year-old is scheduled to visit areas in Nantou County and Greater Taichung near the Chelungpu fault (車籠埔斷層) , the epicenter of the 7.6 magnitude quake, to inspect post-disaster reconstruction.
Dozens of school children from Cingshui Elementary School, which was left severely damaged after the disaster, in the county’s Jhongliao Township (中寮) welcomed Lee yesterday and thanked the former president for his efforts to rebuild the school and the area during the final year of his presidency.
While dissatisfaction over government-led relief work was said to be one of the reasons that the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) lost the 2000 presidential election, Lee, then president and KMT chairman, was praised for his leadership in the daunting task of rescuing, restoring and rebuilding the area after the quake.
Lee’s performance during the period was often cited as example to his successors, in particular incumbent President Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九), who has been criticized for his poor handling of many disaster relief operations.
Education, along with residents’ recovery from post-quake trauma, have been two of the main issues the former president has paid attention to. Speaking at a meeting with a group of teachers and volunteers, Lee said that he thought that quality education is key for local children to improve their skills and fight poverty.
While the school — now complete with a scenic campus and attractive buildings — is beautiful, and teachers, parents and volunteers are passionate about education, Lee lamented the poor condition of the area’s infrastructure.
“This place looks pretty much the same as it did 13 years ago. That tells you the government has not been doing its job, in particular the central government,” Lee said, adding that the central government has to shoulder most of the responsibility for maintaining infrastructure because most local governments are enduring serious financial difficulties.
Lee is scheduled to visit Wufong (霧峰), Shihgang (石岡) and Dongshih (東勢) before returning to Taipei tomorrow.
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