■ Cross-strait ties
Beijing eyes foreign airlines
China is considering allow-ing foreign companies to participate in cross-strait direct air and sea trans-portation operations, a Chinese-language newspaper reported yesterday. China's Minister of Communications Zhang Chunxian (張春賢) said there was "no problem" for foreign shippers and airliners to join the direct link operations, when questioned by Taiwanese reporters Wednesday in Beijing. But they needed to comply with some pre-requisites for such opera-tions, Zhang said without elaborating. His remarks reversed Beijing's policy on the issue, as Chinese officials had always ruled out the possibility of foreign parti-cipation in direct cross-strait transport, the paper said. Beijing has officially consi-dered transport routes to Taiwan as "domestic."
■ Diplomacy
Ping Lu chides Hong Kong
The nation's unofficial representative in Hong Kong yesterday took a gentle swipe at the territory, saying it could do with a little more culture. "Hong Kong has never put its emphasis on its cultural identity," said Ping Lu (平路), director of the Kwang Hwa Information and Culture Center. Hong Kong's economic successes have been enviable, but that has steered its residents to focus on statistics and money while the people of Taiwan have more leisure time and are typically in a "more literary mood," the novelist said. "People in Hong Kong concentrate a lot of their attention on goals," she said. "People seldom have a chance to ponder what they really need inside." An offi-cial at Hong Kong's Leisure and Cultural Services Department had little to say in response. "It's difficult to comment on her remarks as they are rather abstract," said June Tong, a leisure marketing coordinator. "Those are also her personal comments."
■ Women
Taiwanese at CSW meeting
Ten representatives from a host of Taiwanese women's groups are in New York to take part in the annual meeting of the Commission on the Status of Women (CSW), which opened Mon-day at the UN headquarters. The delegates are taking part in the general meeting and peripheral discussions in their capacity as non-governmental organizations, said Chang Chueh (張玨), chairwoman of the Mental Health Association and the delegation leader. According to Chang, delegation mem-bers are scheduled to host four seminars on issues pertaining to women in Asia designed as sideline activi-ties of the CSW general meeting. The meeting, which runs until March 14, focuses its agendas on roles that women play in mass media along with issues of abuse and violence toward women, Chang said.
■ Diplomacy
Soong visits Fukuoka
PFP Chairman James Soong (宋楚瑜) called on Fukuoka Mayor Hirotaro Yamasaki yesterday to discuss exchanges between Taiwan and Japan. During the meeting, also attended by high-ranking officials of the Fukuoka city government, Soong said the main purpose of his visit was to throw out the first pitch to open a baseball game between the Daiei Hawks and the Seibu Lions. He said he hoped the Hawks could play in Taiwan. Soong also praised the Fukuoka Dome, saying that the Taiwanese would like a similar stadium. Yamasaki said that among foreign visitors to his city, Taiwanese are second only to South Koreans in terms of numbers and he expressed hope that his city can increase exchanges with Taiwan.
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