■ Taipei City
Christmas tea in Youth Park
The Taipei City Government will hold an afternoon tea in the Youth Park on Sunday from 1pm to 6pm to mark Christmas. Many flower-related activities will be held during the tea, the city's Bureau of Urban Development said. Scented tea will be offered for free and 100 poinsettia plants will be given away. Floriculturists will demonstrate how to make flower wreaths and flower bookmarks. Several Santa Clauses will make appearances. There will also be music concerts and a magic performance.
■ Diplomacy
Minister denies report
Minister without Portfolio Tsay Ching-yen (蔡清彥) yesterday denied a Washington Times report that said his participation in a forum on global e-business at the UN headquarters in Geneva was aimed at turning the technical forum into a political one. According to the report, Tsay "slipped into" the conference earlier this week, where he publicly challenged the policy of excluding Taiwan from the UN. Commenting on the report, Tsay said he attended the forum in his capacity as an adviser to the AFACT secretariat, an international non-governmental organization, adding that he obtained an entry badge through proper procedures. The report said that Tsay "publicly chastised" China for its policy of blocking Taiwan's participation in international organizations. Tsay said that he never touched upon political issues in his speech. He said he regretted the fact that some news reports misinterpreted his speech. "We want to make it clear that Taiwan wants to be an active player to promote information and communications technology for humanitarian and development purposes and that it has no intention of mixing this up with politics," Tsay said.
■ Obituary
Presidential adviser dies
Lin Chin-ching (林金莖), national policy adviser to the president and former chairman of the Association of East Asian Relations (亞東關係協會), died of liver cancer on Wednesday afternoon at the Taiwan National University Hospital. He was 81. Lin had been diagnosed with cancer about one month ago, according to association secretary-general Kuo Ming-shan (郭明山), adding that the association would assist with funeral arrangements. Lin had made important contributions to Japanese relations, Kuo said. The association is a Taipei-based organization that has handled exchanges with Japan since Tokyo switched diplomatic recognition to Beijing in 1972.
■ Earthquakes
Aftershocks deliver a jolt
Three sizable aftershocks to Wednesday's earthquake jolted the nation yesterday, with one measuring 5.7 on the Richter scale. A magnitude-5.7 temblor followed at 8:01am. A third, measuring 4.5, occurred at 10:22am. The Seismological Observation Center said the three tremors were aftershocks of Wednesday's magnitude-6.6 quake, which was the strongest to hit the country this year. Wednesday's quake was shallow. Its epicenter, near Taitung, was 10km underground. From Wednesday afternoon until 9:30am yesterday, the center had monitored more than 700 aftershocks, of which 35 could be felt by human beings and seven measured above 5 on the Richter scale. "They averaged 20 to 30 aftershocks per hour," said Lu Pei-ling (呂珮玲), deputy director of the center. "Aftershocks will continue for a month, but we predict they will not exceed 6.6 on the Richter scale."
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