ELECTIONS
Ballot paper released
The Central Election Commission yesterday released the three-way ballot paper for the Jan. 11 presidential election and set a 10pm deadline for completing the vote count. The results are to be streamed live on the commission’s Facebook page and YouTube channel, with all of the results expected to be published by 10pm, commission Chairman Lee Chin-yung (李進勇) said. In the interest of transparency, representatives of the parties and candidates would be stationed at polling stations throughout the nation to observe the voting process, he said. The commission also announced that the official presidential campaign period would run from today to Jan. 10. The 28-day campaign period is in accordance with the Presidential and Vice Presidential Election and Recall Act (總統副總統選舉罷免法), but it is usually not rigidly enforced, which has led to calls for reform. It is intended to limit the period in which a wide range of campaign-related activities, such as political rallies and opinion polls, can be conducted.
DIPLOMACY
Prague passes motion
The Prague city council in the Czech Republic on Thursday passed a motion to establish sister city ties with Taipei. The council voted 39-0 to approve the motion, with two abstentions. Prague Mayor Zdenek Hrib announced last week that he would sign a sister city agreement with Taipei Mayor Ko Wen-je (柯文哲) next month when Ko visits the Czech capital and looks to boost bilateral trade, tourism, and cultural and educational exchanges between the two cities. Prague plans to send students to Taipei to learn Mandarin, as well as to study Taiwan’s digitization of healthcare and the development of its metro systems, Hrib said. Prague Zoo expects to be gifted a pangolin by Taipei, he added. Prague terminated its sister city agreement with Beijing in October after a dispute over the removal of the “one China” clause.
CRIME
Prisoner sent to Denmark
Ministry of Justice officials on Wednesday handed over an unnamed prisoner to Danish authorities so that the man could serve the remainder of his sentence in his home nation — the first transfer between the two nations. The Danish national, who is serving a nine-year jail term after being convicted of drug offenses, was placed in the custody of two Danish police offers by Taoyuan prosecutors at Taiwan Taoyuan International Airport, where he was escorted onto a flight bound for Denmark, the ministry said in a statement. The three have since safely arrived in Denmark, the ministry added. The transfer was conducted in line with an agreement signed by the two nations in July. Taiwan has previously transferred seven inmates to Germany and one to the UK, the ministry said.
EDUCATION
Japanese hospitalized
More than 70 Japanese students visiting Taiwan on a school trip have been hospitalized for diarrhea and vomiting in a suspected case of mass food poisoning, the Taipei Department of Health said yesterday. Seventy-two of the about 200 students on Thursday were taken to three different hospitals for treatment, the department said. The students had earlier eaten a breakfast buffet at their hotel in Taoyuan. The department said that it had asked the Taoyuan Department of Public Health to take samples of the food served at the hotel for analysis. As of press time last night, 59 of the students had been discharged from hospital, while 13 remained under observation.
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