■ Inauguration
Ishihara to visit
Tokyo Governor Shintaro Ishihara will visit Taipei from May 18 to 21 to attend President Chen Shui-bian's (陳水扁) inauguration, Tokyo government sources said yesterday. Ishihara's visit, at the invitation of the Presidential Office, will be his third since assuming the Tokyo governorship in April 1999, officials from the Tokyo Government Office said. It is not clear whether he will meet with former president Lee Teng-hui (李登輝) or any other Taiwanese politicians during his four-day stay. Ishihara visited central Taiwan shortly after the nation was struck by the 921 earthquake in 1999. Ishihara, a former minister of transport and a talented writer, has been the most prominent Japanese political figure to visit Taiwan since Japan severed formal diplomatic relations with Taiwan in 1972.
■ Education
Long-distance link set up
The National Kinmen Institute of Technology formally inaugurated long-distance teaching equipment yesterday to set up teaching exchanges with its sister institution in the US. University president Lee Chin-chen (李金振) presided over the inauguration ceremony by linking up with John Cavanaugh, president of West California University, to open an exchange hotline between the two institutions. Lee said that the inauguration is a milestone in promoting higher education on Kinmen.
■ Diplomacy
Diet members back Taiwan
Members of a group of legislators from the Japanese Diet called for the government yesterday to explicitly support Taiwan's bid to join the World Health Assembly (WHA) as an observer. The "Japan-Taiwan Friendly Parliamentarians Alliance," a 70-member union of Japanese lawmakers established in Tokyo last August to help promote friendly relations between Japan and Taiwan, resolved yesterday during a general assembly that the government should openly and clearly support Taiwan's bid for observer status at the WHA, the decision-making body of the World Health Organization, for purely health and medical care reasons. Citing the outbreaks of SARS around the world, particularly in Asia, last year, alliance members said that Taiwan's fate was closely related to all neighboring countries during the SARS onslaught, prompting them to strongly believe that Taiwan should be included in the world health regulatory system.
■ Cross-strait ties
Beijing rules out talks
Beijing ruled out talks with Taipei yesterday unless President Chen Shui-bian (陳水扁) kowtows to its cherished "one China" principle. Li Weiyi (李維一), spokesman for China's policymaking Taiwan Affairs Office, demanded Chen stop "pro-independence" activities and accused him of "cheating the world ... calling for peace and stability on the one hand and waging a holy war against China on the other." "It will be impossible for the two sides to sit down for talks unless Chen Shui-bian recognizes the `one China' principle," Li told a news conference. "There can be no peace and stability in the Taiwan Strait," Li said. Li said Chen's behavior had "dragged cross-strait ties to the brink of danger," but he stopped short of repeating China's longstanding threat to attack Taiwan if it formally declares statehood. China had always advocated the two sides should hold negotiations on an equal footing to end the state of hostility, Li said. Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao (溫家寶) said in Britain this week he would consider a proposal to introduce legislation mandating eventual unification.
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