ELECTION
Five CEC members approved
The Legislative Yuan on Tuesday approved the addition of five people nominated by the Executive Yuan to the Central Election Commission (CEC) to serve four-year terms. The five are to fill four seats on the commission that will become vacant on Sunday, when the incumbents’ terms expire, and a fifth one that is already vacant. They are Soochow University political science professor Hwang Shiow-duan (黃秀端), Deputy Minister of the Interior Chiu Chang-yueh (邱昌嶽), National University of Kaohsiung professor of economics and financial law Evelyn Chen (陳月端), National Chengchi University associate professor of political science Lin Chao-chi (林超琦) and National Cheng Kung University associate professor of political science Meng Chih-cheng (蒙志成). Forty-five lawmakers from the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) and People First Party boycotted the vote, saying the nominees were all either sympathetic to the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) or had participated in DPP activities.
RETAIL
Chatime taps endorser
Chatime, a bubble milk tea brand owned by Taiwan-based La Kaffa International Co, said it has hired Filipino-American actor Ivan Dorschner to endorse its beverages. The endorsement by Dorschner shows the brand’s efforts to penetrate the Southeast Asian market, with the goal of becoming the largest handmade beverage brand in the world, La Kaffa said. A TV host and model in the Philippines, Dorschner has more than 2.9 million Facebook fans and 400,000 Instagram followers, La Kaffa said. Founded in 2005, Chatime now has more than 2,500 outlets in 38 countries worldwide, including the US, Canada, Japan, the UK, Australia, the Philippines and Indonesia.
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