WEATHER
Storm may bring showers
A tropical storm that formed in the west Pacific looks unlikely to affect Taiwan directly as it moves toward the Philippines, but its outer band could bring some rain over the weekend, the Central Weather Bureau said yesterday. As of 2pm, Tropical Storm Nari was centered about 990km southeast of Oluanpi (鵝鑾鼻), moving west-northwest at a speed of 17kph, the bureau said. The storm was packing maximum sustained winds of 90kph, with gusts reaching 118.8kph. Nari is projected to cut through the northern Philippine island of Luzon, but will probably introduce moisture which, combined with seasonal winds from the northeast, could bring showers to northern and northeastern Taiwan over the weekend. The bureau added that another tropical depression was forming near Guam and could develop into a tropical storm over the coming days.
POLITICS
KMT names new spokesman
The Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) announced yesterday that it has appointed Yang Wei-chung (楊偉中), former spokesman of President Ma Ying-jeou’s (馬英九) KMT chairman re-election campaign office, as its spokesman. Yang, 42, had been a social activist who was involved in a series of movements regarding labor rights and media reform. He had then worked in several media outlets, including the Chinese-language the Wang Daily and Radio Taiwan International before joining the Ma administration and serving as director of the Executive Yuan’s Yunlin-Chiayi-Tainan Joint Service Center and Ma’s re-election office chairman. Yang starts his new job on Monday.
SOCIETY
Panda name proves popular
Taipei’s Department of Information and Tourism announced on Wednesday that “Yuan Zai” (圓仔), the nickname of Taipei Zoo’s giant panda cub, is currently the ahead of five other possibilities for its permanent name, with 65 percent of online voters saying she should keep the nickname. The second most popular name as of Tuesday was “Yuan Bao” (圓寶) with 25 percent. “Bao” is Chinese for a gem or a treasure. The name game for the panda, which was born July 6, has attracted 54,000 online votes. Time is ticking on the vote, which is set to end in less than a week. City officials encourage anyone who has not yet voted to do so at http://panda.taipeitravel.net. The official name for the cub will be announced on the Web site on Oct. 26.
JUDICIARY
Sentence increased
The Taiwan High Court ruled on Wednesday to increase the prison sentence for former Presidential Office deputy secretary-general Chen Che-nan (陳哲男), who was convicted of taking bribes, overturning a previous sentence of seven months to hand down a much harsher eight years. After a second retrial, the High Court cited evidence that Chen accepted NT$6 million (US$204,140 at current exchange rates) in 2002 during his stint at the Presidential Office. Chen was paid bribes by businessman Liang Po-hsun (梁柏薰), who asked for help in getting court cases against him dropped, the court said. Chen’s first conviction in the case of “fraud involving the abuse of official authority” brought a 12-year sentence, but judges in a retrial reduced his prison term to seven months on the lesser charge of simple fraud. Wednesday’s ruling supported the abuse of authority conviction at the first trial, but cut the original sentence to eight years due to 72-year-old Chen’s age. The case can be appealed in the Supreme Court.
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