■Cross-strait ties
Business safety a concern
The personal safety of Tai-wanese businesspeople working in China is being increasingly threatened amid a decline in public order there, the Straits Exchange Foundation said yesterday. The foundation said that as of the end of last year, it had received 592 complaints of intimidation against Tai-wanese businesspeople in China last year. Foundation officials said the figure represents only the tip of the iceberg and is an indication of growing social insecurity in China. The officials said that the personal safety of Taiwanese businesspeople based in China is not helped by the fact that many of them break the law there, some intentionally but others because they lack an understanding of the Chinese legal system. For instance, they pointed out, most Taiwanese business-people detained or arrested in China are usually charged with violations of Chinese tax laws, carrying prohibited political publications or being involved in business disputes and false marriages.
■ Travel
Ministry issues warning
The Ministry of Foreign Affairs yesterday issued a travel warning for Iraq, Israel and Palestinian-controlled territories as a result of the buildup of US and British forces in the Gulf region. The ministry also advised Tai-wanese to either leave or defer non-essential travel to areas near Iraq, including Kuwait, Yemen and south-eastern Turkey, the ministry said in a statement. People who plan to travel to Jordan, Saudi Arabia, Bahrain, Syria, Lebanon, Iraq, Qatar and Turkey should exercise extreme caution during their trips, the ministry warned. Taiwanese travelers in need of help should contact Taipei's representative offices in these countries or neighboring countries without hesitation, the ministry said. The latest updates on travel warnings from the ministry can be found on the Internet on a government Web site (http:
//www.boca.gov.tw).
■ Environment
Officials to get dump tour
Taiwan Power Co will arrange for Taitung County Councilors to travel to Europe to visit low-grade nuclear waste dump sites next month, company officials said yesterday.
The officials said 30 councilors will travel to eastern and northern Europe beginning March 15 to visit various nuclear waste facilities and observe their operations. Taipower has listed Nantien Village, Taren Township in Taitung County as a possible dump site for its nuclear waste because the area meets conditions set by the Atomic Energy Council -- a sparsely-populated area with little development potential and without geological formations that could threaten the safety of the facilities.
■ Diplomacy
Panamanian group arriving
Carlos Alvarado, the president of Panama's Legislative Assembly, is slated to lead a 13-member delegation that arrives tomorrow for a five-day visit, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs said yesterday. Accompanied by his wife, the Panamanian official will meet President Chen Shui-bian (陳水扁) and call on Legislative Yuan speaker Wang Jin-pyng (王金平), said the statement. They will also visit the Center for Chinese Language and Culture Studies of the National Normal University, the National Museum of Pre-history, Hsinchu Science-based Industrial Park and other cultural and economic establishments. The dele-gation will leave Taipei on Feb. 20.
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