CROSS-STRAIT TIES
Tsai reiterates ‘status quo’
Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) Chairperson and presidential candidate Tsai Ing-wen (蔡英文) yesterday reiterated that she will maintain Taiwan’s “status quo” if she is elected president, and said China should heed public opinion in Taiwan on cross-strait relations. The majority in Taiwan favor maintaining the “status quo” and peace and stability in the Taiwan Strait, which is in the best interests of all concerned, said Tsai, who is the frontrunner in the lead-up to the presidential election in January next year. Tsai said she hopes Beijing authorities will take time to listen to and understand the views of the Taiwanese.
HEALTH
Dengue cases reach 16,074
The number of dengue fever infections reported in Taiwan since May has reached 16,074, exceeding the 15,492 cases recorded for the whole of last year, the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) said yesterday. The latest figure represents an increase of 792 cases from the previous day, the highest daily increase on record, the CDC said. As of Thursday, 13,960 cases had been reported in Tainan and 1,858 in Kaohsiung, according to CDC figures. In Tainan alone, the number of infections increased by 709 from the previous day. Since May 1, there have been 42 confirmed dengue deaths in Taiwan, the CDC said. It said 12,362 patients have recovered from the mosquito-borne disease, while 51 are being treated in intensive care units.
CULTURE
World dance contest plans
A world dance competition being organized by the New Taipei City Government and the Taiwan International Sport Dance Development Association is set to take place on Oct. 24 in the city’s Sinjhuang Gymnasium. This year, 250 pairs of dancers from 16 countries are to take part in the World Dance Council-Amateur League (WDC-AL) competition, according to the city government’s sports office. This is the fifth consecutive year the two organizations have jointly organized the event, said Huang Ching-yi (黃靜怡), deputy head of the city government’s Department of Education. Last year, the competition was upgraded and renamed the WDC-AL World Cup Asian Dance Tour Taiwan Open and this year, the results of the competition will for the first time be counted as points for the WDC-AL World Open Championships, Huang added. The event has attracted estimated audiences of 6,000 on average over the past few years, association president Sammy Liu (劉順益) said.
SOCIETY
Search for pilots continues
Air and ground search efforts continued yesterday to look for the two missing pilots of AT-3 trainer jet in the mountainous regions bordering Hualien and Nantou counties, with the dispatched military units focused on six locations in the target area, where assessment of aerial photography indicated these as possible sites where the aircraft may have come down. Military officials said on the fourth day of search operation, in addition to the six identified locations, the aircraft crews and ground forces were also instructed be alert and to make reconnaissance checks on valleys, depressions,and lakes in the areas around the 3,785m Mabolasi Mountain (馬博拉斯山) and 3,325m Danda Mountain (丹大山). However, there was no news on finding the two missing pilots as of press time last night.
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