■Pollution
Chen boosts `green' firms
President Chen Shui-bian (陳水扁) yesterday received representatives of 10 manufacturers that had won environmental protection awards. The president noted that the government and the business sector have made great efforts in developing the economy as well as in protecting the environment in recent years. He added that the award recognizes the contributions the 10 enterprises have made in terms of environmental protection. He pointed out that this is the 11th year that the awards have been given and the awards have encou-raged businesses to pay more attention to environmental protection. He also noted that some of the winners, such as the Hualien plant of Taiwan Cement, have won the award for the third consecutive time. He said the plant could be considered a sort of "model of environmentally minded" profitability.
■ Tourism
Philippines alert issued
The government has issued an alert to citizens planning to live or travel in the Philippines to be on guard against possible terror attacks, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs said yesterday. Citing warnings from the US, a ministry statement reminded Taiwanese studying or doing business in the Philippines to "take special care of their personal safety especially during Christmas, New Year and Lunar New Year holidays." Washington has warned of potential terror attacks on the Southeast Asian country during the holidays and urged Americans to stay away from crowded areas, the statement said. A terrorist bombing on Bali Oct. 12 killed more than 190 people, including one Taiwanese woman and four Western rugby players from Taiwan. The government had been criticized for failing to issue warnings on possible bomb attacks in certain countries in Southeast Asia during the holiday season.
■ Cross-strait
Chang goes to China
KMT Legislator John Chang (章孝嚴) left for China yesterday to discuss with Chinese officials technical aspects of the proposed indirect cross-strait chartered flight services for the Lunar New Year holiday. Chang, a major proponent of the chartered flight service proposal that has obtained the endorsement of 140 of his colleagues in the legislature, said before his departure that his three-day trip is also aimed at learning firsthand Beijing's attitude regarding the issue. He noted that the two intermediary bodies across the Taiwan Strait, the Straits Exchange Foundation and China's Association for Relations Across the Taiwan Strait, are not on good communication terms. Chang stressed that finalizing the matter is urgent in terms of time, noting that Lunar New Year falls on Feb. 1 next year and that Taiwan businesspeople operating in China have to begin booking their plane tickets by Dec. 15. If the service is to be put into practice, then the matter will have to be finalized by that time to facilitate businesspeople returning home, he said.
■ Tourism
Visitors promote their region
A tourism-promotion mission from China's Liaoning Province advertised the region to Taiwanese yesterday, describing the northeastern region where Liaoning is located as "a good place worthy of a glance." Chen Tiexin, leader of the 14-member delegation and chief of the province's tourism bureau, promoted the area at a seminar in Taipei. The mission arrived in Taiwan the day before for a 10-day tour and will visit the country's top scenic spots.
Agencies
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