■ Missing person
Student's body found
The body of a South Korean student who came to Taiwan to study Chinese was found at a water pumping station near National Chengchi University in Mucha, police said yesterday. Police said that initial investigations showed that Ryeo Yun-koo, 24, who had been missing since March 22, appeared to have drowned, however, the exact cause of his death will be determined after an autopsy. They said that Ryeo had transferred from Chi-nese Culture University to National Chengchi Univer-sity on March 3. On March 22, he went out with South Korean friends for dinner and drinks. Ryeo's guardians in Taiwan then reported him missing. National Chengchi University officials looked for the student on campus.
Police suspected that Ryeo, under the influence of alcohol and not familiar with the terrain of the school, might have fallen into the water at the pumping station.
■ Humanitarian aid
Tzu Chi aids refugees
Taiwan's Buddhist Compassion Relief Tzu Chi Foundation in Amman, Jordan yesterday sent eight volunteers to deliver toys, biscuits and drinking water to a refugee camp on the border between Jordan and Iraq. A spokesman for the foundation said there are 250 refugees, including 40 children, in the camp some 300km east of Amman. The foundation also sent 26 volunteers on April 4 to deliver bottled drinking water, clothing, sugar, tea leaves and stationery to refugee camps on the border between Jordan and Iraq, the spokesman said. The foundation plans to send school bags for the children in the camps in the near future, he added.
■ Diplomacy
First lady encourages
First lady Wu Shu-chen (吳淑珍) praised a women's group yesterday for its contribution to "people's diplomacy" and urged them to take part more in international exchanges. Wu was addressing the 2003 annual convention of Soroptimist International of Taiwan Region in Kaohsiung, in which more than 200 representatives from around the country participated. Wu praised the performance of the organization and its regional head, Chen Ku Mei-kuei (陳辜美貴), saying that what she described as "the feminine attributes" of caring and tenderness have built the momentum to push the society upward. She also expressed the hope that more women will dedicate themselves to international exchanges. Chen Ku noted that group is one of the few organizations that has joined the UN's non-governmental organizations in the capacity as a country, adding that with the excellent perfor-mance of the nation's women and their selfless devotion, the group has raised Tai-wan's international profile.
■ Nuclear power
No further cancellation
Premier Yu Shyi-kun said yesterday that there is no question that construction of the Fourth Nuclear Power Plant will be suspended again. The premier was responding to questions by KMT Legislator Liu Cheng-hung (劉政鴻), who expres-sed concern about who would be responsible for another possible suspension of the plant, saying that the government paid a hefty price when it suspended construction before. His query follows the suspen-sion of dredging for a wharf for the power plant because of erosion to Fulung Beach -- which could affect delivery of the plant's nuclear reactor and the scheduled opera-tional date of July 15, 2006 of the first unit of the plant's two reactors.
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