■ Diplomacy
Envoy presents credentials
Paraguayan Ambassador Ramon Antreo Diaz Pereira presented his credentials to President Chen Shui-bian (陳水扁) in a ceremony at the Presidential Office yesterday. Chen extended a warm welcome to Diaz upon his arrival to take up his Taipei assignment. Noting that the Republic of China and Paraguay have maintained diplomatic ties since 1957, Chen said the bilateral relationship is based on the shared values of freedom and democracy. "Geographic distance has not hindered our friendship and cooperation because we have a shared belief in freedom and democracy," Chen said.
■ Peace
Kinmen `can be Panmunjom'
A lawmaker from Kinmen suggested yesterday that the outlying island be made into a "truce area" like the village of Panmunjom that straddles the border between North Korea and South Korea in the middle of the Demilitarized Zone. New Party Legislator Wu Cheng-tien (吳成典) said that since the presidential candidates from both the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) and the "pan-blue" alliance made up of the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) and the People First Party have come up with proposals to establish a "peace experimental zone" or a "demilitarized zone," Kinmen could be an ideal place for peaceful and regular cross-Taiwan Strait dialogue.
■ Cross-Strait Ties
Students visit China
A 144-member group of university students arrived in Beijing Tuesday night for a 10-day visit. The group is made up of undergraduate and graduate students from National Taiwan University, National Tsinghua University, National Sun Yat-sen University, Fu Jen Catholic University and Soochow University. Most of the students are visiting China for the first time. The group, sponsored by the Ten Outstanding Young Persons' Foundation, will also visit Shanghai and Hangzhou during the trip, as well as engage in exchanges with Chinese university students.
■ Education
More volunteers sign on
Eleven young Americans yesterday signed contracts with the Nantou County Bureau of Education and two private organizations to teach English in remote areas of the county. The group, the third of its kind, will begin to work this week in primary schools located in remote areas of the county. They will work until the end of June. Under the "English Albert Schweitzer Project," King Car has cooperated with the American Christian Organization and the Institute in Basic Life Principles (IBLP) to organize summer camps for children in Nantou County and has recruited Americans to work as volunteers.
■ Politics
Control Yuan blasts Cabinet
Control Yuan members yesterday proposed a corrective measure to the Executive Yuan, as they deemed that Cabinet members did not perform their duty of reporting to lawmakers on the operation of a Cabinet-level task force for countering the spread of SARS last year. "The Executive Yuan failed to fulfill its duty of reporting to the legislature on the establish-ment and operation of the committee for the prevention and relief of the SARS virus," the measure said. The correction said that scholars and authorities on laws held that the Cabinet could face a charge of negligence if its members simply shrugged off the duty of submitting to a special supervisory committee in charge of monitoring the operation of the Cabinet's task force.
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