■ Politics
Lien Chan on US tour
Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) Chairman Lien Chan (連戰) arrived in New York on Thursday evening en route to Boston, where he will attend a meeting at the Fairbank Center in Harvard University. Lien will return to New York next Wednesday to meet with overseas Chinese in Chinatown to thank them for their enthusiastic support and friendship. He was greeted at the Kennedy International Airport upon arrival from Europe by many supporters on Thursday.
■ Tourism
Kinmen wants mines out
Kinmen County Magistrate Lee Chu-feng (李炷烽) said yesterday he plans to seek foreign financial aid to clear landmines in coastal regions of Kinmen. Lee said the landmines pose great danger to residents but have also had an adverse impact on the island's tourism development. While the Ministry of National Defense has come up with a three-year, NT$448 million plan to demine 12 minefields, Lee said, the plan is not expected to begin until 2006. "Priority will be given to minefields that could affect tourism and public security," said Lieutenant General Hu Chieh (胡捷), deputy commander of the Kinmen Defense Command. "The ministry's three-year demining plan has come too late," Lee said.
■ Cross-strait ties
Concern about space shot
China's space program has a military purpose and will pose a greater threat to the security in Taiwan Strait, Vice Minister of National Defense Chen Chao-min (陳肇敏) claimed yesterday. Chen made the comment as he fielded questions at the Legislative Yuan about the impact of China's space program on cross-strait relations and security. "The establishment of a space station might be the ultimate goal of China," Chen said, which was "bound to have a great effect on cross-strait relations," especially warfare. Chen said that the ministry has kept abreast of the launch of China's first manned spacecraft. He said it would probably take China about 10 years to move from the launch of a manned spacecraft to the completion of such a space station.
Gay pride march in Taipei
■ Society
Gays coming out
Lesbians, gays, and their supporters will participate in the 2003 Taipei Gay Festival on Nov. 1. A spokesman for Gay Hotline said yesterday that participants will march from the 228 Memorial Park in downtown Taipei to a plaza two miles away, where singing, dancing, and other entertainment will be staged to celebrate the "Taipei Fun-For-All Festival." The spokesman said the festival is aimed at making gay and lesbian issues more visible to the general public. Representatives of gay organizations from the US and other countries have been invited to take part in the festivities, he added.
■ Diplomacy
Mongolians seek closer ties
The deputy governor of Mongolia's Dungobi Province, S. Torbat, accompanied by legislator and former Mongolian prime minister J. Narantsatsralt, met with Taipei County commissioner Su Chen-chang (蘇貞昌) yesterday to discuss forging ties between Dungobi and Taipei County. The Dungobi deputy governor is in Taipei to attend a one-month workshop on civil servant and office manager training. Twenty-five Mongolian officials are attending the workshop,which is sponsored by the Mongolian and Tibetan Affairs Commission. Most of the 25 participants are deputy governors.
agencies
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