■ Diplomacy
No secret mission for Lee
The Government Information Office (GIO) denied media reports yesterday that President Chen Shui-bian's (陳水扁) special envoy to the APEC leaders' summit in Bangkok would also travel to Vietnam on a secret diplomatic mission. The reports said Academia Sinica President Lee Yuan-tseh (李遠哲) would visit Hanoi after the APEC meeting, accompanied by National Security Council Deputy Secretary-General Antonio Chiang (江春男). GIO officials said the reports were sheer speculation, stressing that Lee is going to Hanoi only for a long-scheduled academic meeting. However, the officials confirmed that Chiang will accompany Lee to the APEC meeting in Bangkok.
■ Cross-strait ties
China congratulated
The government yesterday offered its well wishes for China's successful launch of its first manned spaceship, but stressed that it is important for Beijing to use its space technology for peaceful purposes. "We welcome any efforts to develop space technology which can help promote living standards and scientific development," said Cabinet spokesman Lin Chia-lung (林佳龍) about the completion of the Shenzhou 5 mission. "But it is not what we want to see if the space technology developed by China is used for non-peaceful purposes, or for an arms race that would destabilize the Asia-Pacific region," he said. All peace-loving people want to see space technology used for peaceful and scientific purposes, Lin said.
■ Migrant workers
Hanoi raises standards
Vietnam is raising standards for its migrant workers who want to work in Taiwan in an effort to cut the number of Vietnamese who abandon their contracts after arriving in Taiwan, an official said yesterday. A number of Vietnamese arrive in Taiwan with contracts to work, then break them to work illegally in higher-paying jobs, said an official from Vietnam's Ministry of Labor, Invalids and Social Affairs. The ministry will suspend the licenses of Vietnam-based employment agencies if more than 3 percent of their recruits break their contracts, the official said on condition of anonymity. The ministry has also ordered agencies not to recruit people who have relatives working illegally in other countries, the official said. The same measures were applied to Vietnamese going to Japan and South Korea, and helped reduce the contract-breaking rate from more than 10 percent to less than 5 percent, the official said. At least 40,000 Vietnamese work in Taiwan as maids, caretakers and factory workers. Nearly half went there in the first nine months of this year, according to government figures.
■ Taipei City
Fairs set for Sunday
The Taipei City Bureau of Social Welfare and the Taipei Post Office are sponsoring two fairs on Sunday in the parking lot of the Neihu flower market. The "New Appearance of Postal Affairs" and "Promotion of the Blind Massage" fairs will run from 8am to 2pm. There will be 194 stalls run by various companies, offering food, fun games, shows and pop quizzes. There will also be 15,000 free raffle tickets worth NT$40 to be given away to participants. Raffle prizes include a 125cc motorcycle, a digital-video camera, TV, refrigerator and stereo system. Free massages will be provided by 120 blind masseurs and there will be performances by visually impaired artists.
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