The Taiwan Environmental Protection Union (TEPU) yesterday called on mayoral and commissioner candidates in the Nov. 29 nine-in-one elections to respond to a list of appeals made by a coalition of more than 20 environmental protection groups before a deadline tomorrow.
The list comprises 20 appeals to improve the environment and people’s quality of life, such as abolishing the Fourth Nuclear Power Plant in New Taipei City’s Gongliao District (貢寮); decommissioning other nuclear power plants in a timely manner; protecting old trees and increasing vegetation areas; preventing genetically modified foods from being served at schools; and tightening food inspection standards.
On the promotion of energy efficiency, the groups asked candidates to pledge implementation of energy conservation and carbon reduction practices if elected, and cut annual energy consumption in their constituencies by 5 percent per capita, as well as to boost the production or energy storage capacity of renewable power generation infrastructure.
Photo: Liu Hsin-de, Taipei Times
Taking the form of a questionnaire, the list asks the candidates to check one of two boxes under each appeal to indicate whether they agree with the proposals presented, and requires them to sign the document at the end.
Union chairman Liu Gin-show (劉俊秀) said that mayors’ and commissioners’ views on environmental policies are important because city and county governments are in charge of enforcing environmental laws and regulations.
He also said that the public should look out for possible influence-peddling between local authorities and construction contractors, and that environmental protection groups should be allowed to partake in the assessment process of development plans.
The union’s founding chairperson and veteran antinuclear activist Shih Hsin-min (施信民) said that a dozen candidates had replied to the questionnaire as of yesterday.
He called on more candidates to respond, saying that the results would be compiled and made public to voters as a reference before they cast their ballots.
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