■ Cross-Strait Ties
UK backs US position
Britain backed the US posi-tion on China and Taiwan, saying yesterday that any unilateral moves to change the status quo between the diplomatic rivals would be cause for concern. "We welcome any statement that reduces cross-straits ten-sions and we would be extremely concerned about any unilateral action aimed at changing the status quo and which increases cross-straits tensions," Foreign Office Minister Bill Rammell told reporters. President George W. Bush told Chi-nese Premier Wen Jiabao (溫家寶) during a visit to Washington last week that the US opposed any uni-lateral move by Beijing or Taipei to change Taiwan's status quo. Rammell said Britain was following closely developments on Taiwan.
■ crime
Taiwanese shot in Manila
A Taiwanese tourist was fatally shot in Manila yes-terday after he tried to flee from robbers who held up a minibus, police said. A 33-year-old man surnamed Yang and his compatriot, surnamed Chang, were in a jeepney -- an open minibus -- when three men posing as passengers threatened them with a gun and a knife, senior police officer Benito Cabatbat said. After the robbers snatched Yang's wristwatch and Chang's bracelet, the two Taiwanese jumped from the moving vehicle. One of the robbers shot Yang, who was pro-nounced dead on arrival in a hospital, Cabatbat said. Chang, who was studying in Manila, was unhurt, and the assailants escaped. The two had just bought hamburgers and were on their way home in Manila's tourist district of Malate at around 4:45am when the incident took place. Police said a series of similar jeepney robberies had taken place hours earlier in the same area.
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