POLITICS
DPP appeals for Wu, Hong
Eleven Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) lawmakers yesterday urged Prosecutor-General Huang Shih-ming (黃世銘) to file an extra appeal against a final ruling involving senior DPP politicians Wu Nai-jen (吳乃仁) and Hong Chi-chang (洪奇昌) in the sale of a Taiwan Sugar Corp (Taisugar) property in 2004. The Taiwan High Court on March 13 upheld a ruling that Wu, who was chairman of Taisugar in 2003, had violated Taisugar’s rental-only policy and sentenced him to three years and 10 months in prison, while Hong was given two years and four months for lobbying. The DPP lawmakers said that the policy regulating state-owned enterprises’ public land leases and superficies was abolished on March 2001, before the property deal was made. Hong argued that he had not interfered in the real-estate deal, while Wu said the sale was completed six months after he had left Taisugar and that he was not the main individual responsible for the deal.
HEALTH
Toys fail safety tests: bureau
Four out of 20 samples of inflatable toys tested in southern Taiwan were found to contain excessive amounts of plasticizer, the Bureau of Standards, Metrology and Inspection said recently. The substandard items, picked at random in Greater Kaohsiung and Pingtung County in the run-up to the summer season, when water activities are popular, contained plasticizer at levels 200 to 500 times higher than the national safety limit of 0.1 percent, the bureau said. In addition, 11 of the items were not labeled in accordance with the Commodity Inspection Act (商品檢驗法), with infringements such as mislabeling of the toys’ names and age limits, and failing to identify the materials used, place of origin, names of the importer and manufacturer and safety warnings, the bureau said. Fines of NT$100,000 (US$3,340) to NT$1 million can be imposed on dealers who fail to recall the substandard items and make corrections, it added.
CULTURE
All-female troupe to perform
The all-female Japanese musical theater troupe Takarazuka Revue will be performing for the first time in Taiwan this month as the group marks its 99th anniversary, a Ministry of Foreign Affairs official said yesterday. More than 40 troupe members will perform at the National Theater from Saturday to April 14, the ministry said, adding that a Japanese parliamentary delegation would also arrive for Saturday’s performance. The troupe is scheduled to meet with Japan’s representative in Taipei today, according to the Taipei office of the Interchange Association, Japan.
CULTURE
Israeli bands at festival
Nine Israeli bands and individual artists will join the Spring Scream music festival in southern Taiwan via the Internet, the Israel Economic and Cultural Office in Taipei said yesterday. The musicians will give a six-hour concert in Tel Aviv that will start at 6pm tomorrow, and local viewers will be able to watch the live performance on a big screen set up at the music festival’s venue in Kenting (墾丁), the office said. It will be the first time for foreign musicians to give a live performance at the music bash via the Internet, the office said. Israeli DJ Orly Yaakobi will be in Taiwan to host the six-hour performance and introduce the acts to the local audience, it said. This year’s Spring Scream is scheduled to run from today to Sunday at Kenting’s Oluanpi Lighthouse National Park. The festival will feature about 250 bands and DJs on eight stages, the organizers said.
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