■ SARS
Avoid China, Yu says
Premier Yu Shyi-kun yesterday urged citizens to postpone visits to China for the traditional tomb sweeping festival, as Taiwan announced another case of a deadly flu-like illness that has also hit southern China and other parts of Asia. "For your own health, postpone trips until the severe acute respiratory syndrome is under control on the mainland," Yu said. Thousands of Taiwanese were expected to visit China this week for Saturday's tomb sweeping festival, a national holiday when families worship their ancestors and clean and maintain their graves.
■ SARS
Vietnamese workers alerted
The Taipei City Government has launched a Vietnamese-language publicity campaign to alert Vietnamese workers of the risk of severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS), a municipal labor official said yesterday. As part of the campaign, the official said, the municipal Bureau of Labor Affairs has produced Vietnamese-language radio programs to inform Vietnamese citizens working in Taipei of the SARS outbreak, its major symptoms, feasible disinfection measures and major agencies or medical institutions to contact in case they experience symptoms. Vietnam is listed by the World Health Organization as one of the serious SARS-affected areas. "The number of Vietnamese citizens legally working in Taipei is not large, and they are all subject to regular physical checkups, at least once every six months," the official said. He said the municipal labor bureau has tentatively decided to suspend imports of Vietnamese workers for the time being to help contain the spread of the mysterious disease.
■ Cross-strait ties
Chinese aircraft to arrive
A Chinese civilian aircraft is expected to fly to Taiwan for the first time in half a century as early as May to undergo maintenance here, it was reported yesterday. Shanghai Airlines plans to separately contract Far East Airport Transport Corp and Evergreen Aviation Technologies Corporation for the maintenance of two Boeing 757s and four Boeing 767s, a Chinese-language newspaper said. The Civil Aeronautics Administration has said it would be "pleased" to see the maintenance of Chinese civil aircraft here, according to the paper. And the evaluation of the landmark applications by the Mainland Affairs Council is "nearing the last stage," it said. However, the Chinese planes would be required to fly to "third places" from where they would be flown by Taiwanese pilots to here, the paper said.
■ Broadcasting
Macroview announces show
Daily news broadcasts from Taipei-based Macroview TV, which caters to overseas Chinese worldwide, are scheduled to begin at 8pm today, the Central News Agency (CNA) said yesterday. CNA's Multimedia News Department is producing and sponsoring the broadcast of the 30-minute Macroview TV News, scheduled to be aired in nine major time zones worldwide three times a day, including two reruns, beginning today, CNA said. Viewers around the world can see the timetable of the news services at www.ocac.gov.tw. The Macroview TV News is one of the many new business operations of CNA since it launched an across-the-board overhaul of its management and organizational structure last November. Macroview TV, a brainchild of the Overseas Chinese Affairs Commission, began operations March 1, 2000.
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