NATIONAL DEFENSE
Government denies reshuffle
The Presidential Office yesterday denied that any reshuffle of senior military personnel would take place in the near future. The Chinese-language China Times reported that some senior positions would soon be reshuffled, with former chief of the general staff General Lin Chen-yi (林鎮夷) to replace Kao Hua-chu (高華柱) as minister of national defense. It also cited unidentified sources as saying that Kao would be reassigned as the representative to an unidentified European country. The report also said that Navy Commander Admiral Tung Hsiang-lung would swap positions with Deputy Chief of the General Staff Executive Officer Admiral Chen Yung-kang (陳永康). Presidential Office spokesperson Lee Chia-fei (李佳霏) denied said the report was speculation.
HEALTH
Food test alliance planned
Food industry officials said on Wednesday that they would set up a testing alliance in a bid to restore consumer confidence as the industry grapples with a string of food scares. Wei Ying-chun (魏應充), chairman of Wei Chuan Foods Corp and the Taiwan Food GMP Development Association, said that about 47 food suppliers would establish a testing alliance to share laboratory resources. Uni-President Enterprises Co urged the government to require all food additive suppliers to register online to help the industry filter out uncertified suppliers. The legislature last month passed a revision to the Act Governing Food Sanitation (食品衛生管理法) that increases penalties for suppliers using industrial-grade starch, as well as requiring domestic food suppliers to register online in a bid for more transparent information and better food source management.
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