■ United States
Caucus sends Chen regards
With the approach of the third anniversary of President Chen Shui-bian's (陳水扁) May 20, 2000 inauguration, several US congressmen have extended their congratulations to him. The US Congressional Hispanic Caucus (CHC) recently sent a letter to Chen lauding his performance, which they claimed has won wide admiration in the world. The members of the CHC expressed appreciation for Chen's efforts to maintain peace and stability in the Taiwan Strait and expressed hope that other Asian countries will understand that peace in the Taiwan Strait is in the interests of the entire world. Taiwan has solid relations with the US and is its eighth-largest trading partner. It also supports the US anti-terrorism campaign, the letter said. The caucus was happy when Taiwan joined the WTO last year and is hoping that Taiwan can take part in the annual conference of World Health Assembly, the highest decision-making body of the World Health Organization, that starts on Monday in Geneva, it added.
■ Television
Public TV up for award
Taiwan's Public Television Service will be one of three non-American media institutions honored at the 62nd Annual Awards Ceremony of the George Foster Peabody Awards tomorrow. Thirty-one programs will be cited for recognition based on the Peabody Board's only criterion -- excellence -- according to the organizer. Taiwan's PTS is being recognized for How High Is the Mountain, a portrayal of the power of family ties to overcome age, illness, geography and politics. PTS President Lee Yung-te (李永得) described the program as a touching record of a veteran's family in Taiwan which, after visiting the father's birthplace in China, realizes that their roots have been transplanted to Taiwan.
■ Festivals
Chen visits wood-craft fair
President Chen Shui-bian (陳水扁) took part in the annual Sanyi Wood Carving Festival yesterday in Miaoli County and hailed the event that has turned Sanyi -- a Hakka township -- into a synonym for the wood-carvers craft in Taiwan. Praising the annual carving festival for transforming Sanyi from a rural backwater to a well-known tourist spot in central Taiwan, Chen also lauded the Sanyi cuisine and ceramics as features attractive enough to lure tourists. According to the president, Sanyi has found its own unique way after a deep soul-searching process. Chen called on the people of Taiwan to visit the festival -- one of the 12 major festivals promoted by the Ministry of Transportation and Communications -- to get to know Sanyi and experience the Hakka culture, although the spread of SARS has cast a shadow on everyday life.
■ Recruiting
Delegation postpones trip
A delegation aimed at recruiting high-tech talent from overseas has postponed its visit from June to September because of fears over SARS. Despite the postponement, the Hsinchu Science-based Industrial Park Administration said that preparation work for the delegation's overseas trip, originally scheduled for June 12 to 24, is being carried out smoothly. Forty-one manufacturers and research institutes are looking for around 1,300 high-tech personnel, and 25 manufacturers and institutions have decided to send officials to be a part of the delegation, administration officials said. Those people who were planning to meet with the delegates and are interested in working in Taiwan can still contact the companies directly, they 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
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
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