■ 228 incident
Lu wants to find the facts
Vice President Annette Lu (呂秀蓮) yesterday urged the public to find the facts about the 1947 228 Incident, saying that more conferences and grassroots participation is necessary to highlight the significance of the event. "Relatives of the victims who died in this incident still suffer the pains of having lost family members because the government can't concretely tell the public how the event happened," Lu said attending a conference to discuss the role of the military in the 228 Incident yesterday. Lu visited the historic site in Keelung where the 21st division of the army landed in 1947 to suppress the island-wide protest against KMT rule. Lu has urged the government to continue to find the documents and achieves related to the incident in the private sector and government departments to complete the task of discovering the truth about the event.
■ Asylum
Police keep eye on Xu Po
A Chinese man who is seeking political asylum in Taiwan is living comfortably in a Taoyuan hotel under 24-hour guard by police while his application is being processed, an officer at the Aviation Police Bureau said yesterday. Xu Po (徐波) is under house confinement but is allowed out each day with a police escort for walks. He has also been given a computer to use. Xu can contact those outside of the hotel after receiving permission from police, a bureau officer said. Commissioner of the Aviation Police Bureau Chang Si-liang (張四良) visited Xu on Lunar New Year's eve, Jan. 31, and gave him a red envelope with an undisclosed sum of money and a fruit basket, the officer said. Xu disembarked from a plane that was making a stopover in Taiwan on its way from Seoul to Bangkok Jan. 26. He claimed to be a democracy activist in China and sought political asylum. Considering him a possible political refugee, local authorities have been consulting their counterparts in South Korea and international refugee organizations on Xu's case.
■ Justice
Ministry looks to Europe
The Ministry of Justice will do its best to sign judicial assistance accords with other countries, especially those in Europe, to combat crime, ministry officials said yesterday. This remains a top priority for the ministry and it wishes to forge such an agreement with Switzerland, the officials said. The officials noted that countries involved in the high-profile Lafayette-frigate scandal are all European. Taiwan has been unable to obtain the objective until now due to the lack of formal diplomatic relations with most European nations, they said. Taiwan signed a judicial assistance accord with the US in March last year.
■ Health
WMA head to visit
World Medical Association President Dr. Kati Myllymaki is slated to reach Taipei today for a six-day visit, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs said yesterday. The Finnish doctor is expected to visit officials involved in Taiwan's bid to join the World Health Organization (WHO), according to the ministry. These officials include Vice Minister of Foreign Affairs Michael Kau (高英茂), deputy head of the Department of Health Lee Lung-teng (李龍騰), as well as ambassador-at-large Wu Yung-tung (吳運東), according to the press release. Wu also serves as president of the Taiwan Medical Association. She is also to visit National Taiwan University Hospital and other establishments, the statement said.
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