■ Culture
Canada fetes Taiwanese
People in Vancouver will celebrate the Taiwanese Cultural Festival in September, during which a dragon boat held will be held. Four dragon boats will be shipped from Taiwan later this month for the contest. The boats will be carried to Vancouver by China Airlines. Vancouver Mayor Larry Campbell has proclaimed Sept. 5 as "Taiwan Day" in the city. There are more than 7,000 Taiwanese-Canadians living in the city. Lo You-chung (羅由中), director general of the Taipei Economic and Cultural Office in Vancouver, visited Polland Friday and presented him the model of a dragon boat as a token of friendship.
■ Tourism
Delegation promotes travel
A large delegation from Taiwan is in Beijing to promote tourism, which was hard hit by the outbreaks of SARS on both sides of the Taiwan Strait. According to official statistics, Taiwan people made 7.62 million visits abroad last year. Included are the number of China-bound visits via Hong Kong, Macau or other countries which reached 3.7 million. China has become the most popular destination for tourists from Taiwan. However, travel between Taiwan and China nearly froze in March, when SARS began to affect both sides. The delegation, composed of over 300 people, represents the largest tourism promotion group that Taiwan has sent to China after the SARS outbreaks. Due to the lifting of quarantine requirements for travelers from China and discounts offered by airlines, China-bound air tickets are in great demand.
■ Health
SARS warrior goes to US
Lee Ming-liang, Taiwan's top coordinator in the fight against SARS, flew into Washington, DC Friday for a three-day visit. The former director-general of the Department of Health will be in Washington mainly to attend a health seminar sponsored by the Center for Strategic & International Studies. Lee will also meet with US health officials and express his appreciation to overseas Chinese living in the greater Washington area who donated cash or surgical masks to Taiwan people during the height of the SARS outbreak in Taiwan. Learning of Lee's visit, a team of experts from the Atlanta-based Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) flew to Washington to meet with Lee and discuss Taiwan's SARS situation and experiences. SARS hit Taiwan in mid-March, but only sporadic cases were reported before a cluster transmission at Taipei Municipal Hoping Hospital changed the situation.
■ Education
Foreign teachers sought
The Ministry of Education is planning to bring in over 400 English teachers from overseas by the end of this year to upgrade the standard of English teaching in Taiwan, an education official said Saturday. Chen Ming-ying (陳明印), deputy director of the ministry's Department of Elementary Education, made the remarks when he accompanied Minister of Education Huang Jung-chun (黃榮村) to Taitung, eastern Taiwan to inspect the academic proficiency tests for junior high school students there. Chen said that the ministry is now contacting trade and economic offices and cultural centers of the UK, the US, Australia and Canada that are based in Taiwan. Once the contracts are signed, the English teachers will first take a one-month class in Taiwan to learn more about the culture and educational situation in Taiwan.
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