■ SARS
Perng offers solution
The dark days of the Asian financial crisis saw central bank governor Perng Fai-nan (彭淮南) credited with finding the right medicine to cure the nation's financial woes. Now, as a deadly flu-like virus spreads rapidly around the world, Perng says a mixture of vinegar, crushed garlic, lily flowers and other Chinese herbal medicines can ward off severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS). Perng offered his own variant of the concoction to central bank employees and journalists, saying "this can be effective against SARS," one bank official said yesterday. In an internal memo, the central bank said its in-house grocery store would offer the vinegar-based potion for employees.
■ Meeting
Taiwanese officials observe
Two Taiwanese officials are participating in an international conference on controlling drug abuse and trafficking that opened in Panama City Monday. It is the first time in more than two decades that Taiwan has managed to take part in a global meeting on contraband drug control as an observer. Cabinet-level Coast Guard Administration officials Ko Chi-ming (柯繼明) and Liu Chih-wei (劉志偉) are representing Taiwan in the 21st International Meeting on Control of Drugs, which is jointly organized by the US Drug Enforcement Administration and the National Police of Panama. Representatives from 63 countries are participating in the three-day meeting, which features discussions on international cooperation to facilitate the control of drug trafficking. Ko said the meeting gives him and his colleagues an opportunity to learn from the experiences of other countries in fighting drug trafficking.
■ Tourism
Data show industry hurting
The US-led war in Iraq and the outbreak of severe acute respiratory syndrome have taken a heavy toll on Taiwan's travel market, according to government figures released yesterday. Statistics compiled by the Bureau of Immigration show that the number of outbound travelers declined 20 percent last month compared with the year-earlier level. About 90 percent of China-bound tour groups have canceled their travel plans, with the daily decline reaching 4,900 people. Nearly all Hong Kong-bound individual travelers dropped their travel plans. The number of visitors to Japan fell by 10 to 20 percent last month while the number of Southeast Asia- and Europe-bound visitors decreased 30 percent to 40-percent and 20 percent to 30 percent, respectively. Foreign arrivals also plunged. The number of tourist arrivals slid 5.5 percent from the year-earlier level, according to the Bureau of Immigration.
■ SARS
WTO meeting halted
Vice Minister of Economic Affairs Chen Ruey-lung (陳瑞隆) returned to Taipei yesterday after the World Trade Organization (WTO) suddenly halted a meeting in Beijing due to an alert over the global spread of severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS). Chen returned to Taiwan aboard a charter flight via Seoul rather than through Hong Kong, which, together with China, has been declared by the World Health Organization (WHO) as an affected area since the outbreak of the disease in the middle of last month. Chen had originally planned to return April 13 after the seminar had concluded, but the WTO decided to halt the proceedings following a WHO suggestion that meetings being held in Asia be canceled as soon as possible and that travelers return home as quickly as possible.
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