SWING TO THE RIGHT:AFP, MONTEVIDEOUruguay’s long-dominant leftist ruling party was facing defeat in a presidential election runoff yesterday as the small South American country prepared to swing to the right. A win for the right would “reflect a trend in the region of voters rejecting the incumbent party over disappointing results,” he said. “Voters are tired of economic stagnation, high unemployment and rising crime since the end of the commodity supercycle and will look to Mr Lacalle Pou for improvements,” Wood told reporters. The latest polls showed Lacalle Pou at 51 percent, ahead of the 43 percent for Martinez. Uruguay has long been considered a bastion of peace and stability in an often turbulent region.

Had Venice’s political leaders not begun to shift resources away from higher education and innovation in the 1980s, Venice could have emerged by now as a kind of Cambridge on the Adriatic. Yes, Venice is engaged in a 5.5 billion euro (US$6 billion) flood-barrier project, called Modulo Sperimentale Elettromeccanico (MOSE). However, the project, launched in 1984 — when Venice was already sinking — and inaugurated in 2003, was supposed to be completed in 2011. Even if MOSE is finished by its current deadline in 2021, neither it nor any other construction project would be enough to protect Venice. The first step is to remove Venice from the jurisdiction of the Italian government, whose consistent failures have driven the city’s decline in recent decades.

Indian firms were slapped with 17.62 to 47.51 percent anti-dumping tariffs, the department said. The investigations were launched after Nan Ya Plastics Corp America, a subsidiary of Taiwan’s Nan Ya Plastics Corp (南亞塑膠), and US-based Unifi Manufacturing Inc brought a petition against Chinese and Indian exporters. However, with the heavy tariffs now imposed on Chinese polyester textured yarn exporters, Taiwanese companies would have a chance to return, Lealea said. Nan Ya Plastics said that its US subsidiary is likely to see an increase in orders from Unifi, as a result of the heavy tariffs imposed on Chinese and Indian firms. Industry sources said that Chinese firms facing heavy tariffs in the US are likely to sell their products on the domestic market, which would tighten competition for Taiwanese companies operating in China, including Nan Ya Plastics.

In the past three years, the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) has “divided the nation and undermined the Republic of China’s [ROC] stability and harmony,” Wu wrote on his Facebook page. It has also distorted the “1992 consensus,” making it difficult for anyone to promote cross-strait exchanges using the framework, he said. The consensus could provide a useful basis for ensuring cross-strait peace and stability, which is in line with the Constitution, Wu said. At this key moment, which could determine whether the ROC survives, “I feel heavily responsible and no enjoyment at all” as KMT chairman, he said. He would silently shoulder the criticisms and anxiety from the public and members of the KMT who fail to understand him, Wu said.

Now the much-mourned “pissotieres,” the dark-green public urinals that gave relief to generations of Parisian men, are finally getting their place in the city’s social and architectural history. The first-ever exhibition in the French capital dedicated to the once ubiquitous and notorious facilities opened on Wednesday. The one-man originals — with a rather phallic peppermill design — were quickly christened “Rambuteau’s columns” after the aristocratic city official who commissioned them in 1834. Some of the disinformation that fueled the anti-Semitic Dreyfus Affair, which rocked France at the turn of the 20th century, was spread through the pissotieres, Martin found through a decade of research. Despite endless campaigns for their closure on grounds of “social hygiene,” pissotieres were a potent if smelly symbol of the City of Lights, he said.

Reuters, BUCHARESTRomanians yesterday went to the polls for a presidential runoff expected to re-elect centrist Romanian President Klaus Iohannis, who has pledged to restart a judicial reform slowed down by successive Social Democrat (PSD) governments. While there have been no recent opinion polls, local bookmakers made Iohannis the short-odds favorite to beat former Romanian prime minister Viorica Dancila comfortably. “I will vote for a president to represent us, one that is respected both at home and abroad. The president’s powers are mostly limited to nominating a prime minister on the basis of who can command a majority, challenging laws in the Constitutional Court and appointing some chief prosecutors. Iohannis, a soft-spoken ethnic German and former mayor of Sibiu, became president in 2014.

AP, PERTH, AustraliaChina yesterday denied the explosive claims of a self-confessed spy seeking asylum in Australia, saying that he is a convicted fraudster wanted by Shanghai police. Wang said he was involved in the kidnapping in 2015 of one of five Hong Kong booksellers suspected of selling dissident materials. The embassy said Wang left for Hong Kong on April 10 carrying a fake Chinese passport and a fake Hong Kong permanent resident ID. Wang would be the first Chinese intelligence operative to blow his cover. He told Nine Network he faced detention and possible execution if he returned to China.

AFP, LONDONBritish Prime Minister Boris Johnson was yesterday to unveil his Conservative Party’s manifesto, pledging to move on from Brexit and austerity in a bid to secure a general election victory. “I’m looking forward to sharing our manifesto,” Johnson said on Twitter on Saturday. The main plank of the Conservative manifesto is the Brexit deal Johnson negotiated with Brussels last month. However, Johnson has his weak spots, especially after the years of austerity imposed by Conservative governments since 2010. Johnson has announced a three-year plan to increase state-school spending in England by ￡7.1 billion by 2022-2023.

By Cheng Ming-hsiang and Dennis Xie / Staff reporter, with staff writerAs the Jan. 11 elections approach, people should be on the lookout for “election stress syndrome,” a psychiatrist said. An 85-year-old man surnamed Wang was diagnosed with a form of anxiety that is often characterized by mood swings during or after an election period, Huang said. Wang displayed similar symptoms during the 2016 presidential election campaign, the doctor said. People with “election stress syndrome” should redirect their attention to something else and reduce their exposure to news about elections, Huang said. If a person experiences negative thoughts for more than two weeks after an election, they should visit a doctor, Huang added.

When making its at-large lists, the KMT pays little attention to Aborigines, perhaps because it believes that they are die-hard KMT supporters. It garners at least 65 percent of the Aboriginal vote in every election. The DPP’s proportion of the Aboriginal vote has never exceeded 20 percent, although it often puts Aborigines on its at-large list. Since the 2004 legislative elections, the party has had Aborigines on its list in almost every election. When casting party votes on Jan. 11, my fellow Aborigines should make their choice with caution, and they should no longer be deceived by the sweet words of political parties.

By THOMAS HO 何振盛After some initial difficulties and subsequent changes, the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) has finally managed to publish its legislator-at-large list. Looking at the top 17 names on the KMT’s legislator-at-large list, there are nominees with military, police, legal, economic, financial, educational, social welfare, agricultural, water conservation and data analysis expertise. This is a legislator-at-large list that prioritizes politics above expertise and representativeness, but while it is clearly about political positioning, it does nothing to improve the party’s outlook for next year’s presidential election. To be fair, the Democratic Progressive Party’s (DPP) legislator-at-large list is not particularly outstanding either. Although it is clear that politics are overriding expertise, Legislator Wu Yu-chin (吳玉琴), who occupies the top spot, is an expert representative of welfare for the elderly and long-term care.

About 2.5 million people, or about 60 percent of the electorate, had voted by 6:30pm, the Hong Kong government said. Residents faced unusually long lines at polling stations across the territory as they came out to vote in the district council elections. “It’s good for me, but more importantly good for democracy.”The vote proceeded peacefully and as scheduled, despite prior warnings from Hong Kong officials that it could be postponed. Its elections have typically been plagued by low voter turnout and are not hugely competitive, compared with those for the more powerful Hong Kong Legislative Council. Enthusiasm is high among pro-democracy forces, who are hopeful they can pressure Hong Kong Chief Executive Carrie Lam’s (林鄭月娥) administration to become more compromising.

She informed them that she was on a small island 180km from China, where the Presbyterian Mackay Memorial Hospital welcomed the NMA to continue their work there. Bjorgaas would make Taiwan his home for most of the next 28 years, caring for countless leprosy, tuberculosis and polio patients. He was greeted by Kristoffer Fotland of the NMA, who had left his job at Mackay Memorial Hospital and set up a mission in Hsinchu. He expressed interest in treating such patients in Taiwan, only to be told that there were already two Western doctors on the task. A month after Bjorgaas’ arrival, American doctor Joseph Leyburn Wilkerson came calling on behalf of Lillian Dickson.

By David Stringer / BloombergNot every advance in electric-vehicle technology takes place inside the sterile calm of a research laboratory. More powerful batteries and better motors, energy-management software and braking systems are all being transferred from the racetrack to the showroom. It also plans to use the same operating software across its planned range of electric passenger vehicles. “The cars that win in Formula E are the most energy efficient, which is largely driven by software,” Paris-based DS Automobiles said. Lucid’s Formula E batteries pack in more energy than alternatives that are commercially available for regular vehicles, said James Frith, a London-based analyst for BloombergNEF.

Staff writer, with CNAEleven rare diseases are to be added to the medical conditions covered by the Patient Right to Autonomy Act (病人自主權利法), the ministry announced on Friday last week. The act, which went into effect on Jan. 6 and is the first of its kind in Asia, gives people the right to decide in advance what medical treatment or healthcare option they will accept if they are terminally ill, are in an irreversible coma or a permanent vegetative state, have advanced dementia or meet other conditions announced by authorities. Such patients are entitled to terminate life-sustaining treatment, as well as artificial nutrition. As part of the act’s implementation and after a series of meetings with experts over the past year, the ministry has named 11 rare diseases — multiple system atrophy, Duchenne muscular dystrophy, hereditary epidermolysis bullosa, Huntington disease, limb-girdle muscular dystrophy, nemaline myopathy, spinocerebellar ataxia, spinal muscular atrophy, amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, cystic fibrosis and primary pulmonary hypertension — as conditions that are unbearable or incurable. The act — written to “respect patient autonomy in healthcare, to safeguard their rights to a good death, and to promote a harmonious physician-patient relationship” — was completed in 2015 and promulgated on Jan. 6 the following year, but only went into effect this year.