POLITICS
Tsai promises punishment
The Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) will hand down severe punishment to members who failed to vote in accordance with its position in Thursday’s Greater Tainan City Council speaker election, DPP Chairperson Tsai Ing-wen (蔡英文) said yesterday. Once there is solid evidence that they went against the party line, errant city councilors are to be expelled from the party, Tsai said during a visit to Chiayi County. In the election, the DPP’s Lai Mei-hui (賴美惠) lost to Lee Chuan-chiao (李全教) of the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT), in a 29-26 vote with two abstentions. The DPP holds 29 seats on the 57-member city council, the KMT 16, the Taiwan Solidarity Union one and independents 11. It has been reported that the KMT offered some DPP councilors up to NT$10 million (US$315,000) to vote for Lee. Tsai said the election result is a disgrace to democracy, adding that the party would also submit its findings to judicial authorities if necessary.
POLITICS
Eric Chu to tour nation
The only candidate in the upcoming election for chairman of the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT), New Taipei City Mayor Eric Chu (朱立倫), plans to present his platform to party members in 11 cities and counties starting today in New Taipei City. Chu then plans to travel to cities and counties including Greater Taoyuan, Hsinchu City, and Taitung and Hualien counties, as well as either Taipei or Keelung before the election set for Jan. 17, the KMT said in a statement released yesterday. If elected, he is to replace President Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九), who resigned as chairman following the party’s rout in last month’s nine-in-one elections.
ASTRONOMY
Comet Lovejoy set to fly by
Astronomy buffs can celebrate the coming new year with Comet Lovejoy, which is expected to be at its brightest early next month, the Taipei Astronomical Museum said yesterday. Lovejoy, discovered by Australian comet hunter Terry Lovejoy in August, is to reach its closest point to Earth on Jan. 7, about 70.2 million kilometers away, the museum said. It should be easy for people using binoculars to look in the eastern sky after dusk and find the comet’s white, misty form, the museum said. The comet’s apparent magnitude could range between four and five, possibly becoming as bright as the Andromeda Galaxy, the museum said. The magnitude is a measurement of the brightness of a celestial body as seen by an observer on Earth and falls in numerical value the brighter an object becomes.
PUBLICITY
iSee Taiwan plans promos
The iSee Taiwan Foundation, the sponsor of this year’s annual New Year’s fireworks at Taipei 101, said it hopes to continue raising the nation’s global profile through promotional campaigns. It said its iSee Taiwan initiative is to run through March 31 with projects that either help make Taiwan better or draw international attention. Now in its preliminary stage, the initiative plans to accept projects in any form as long as the team behind the submission includes two or more people. Submission evaluation methods are still being hammered out, but the foundation expects to pick 300 projects to support and put online with English and Chinese descriptions. Interested applicants can find out more (in Chinese) at www.iseetaiwan.org/iseetaiwan2015.
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