■ Reagan book signed
Vice Foreign Affairs Minister Michael Kau (高英茂) represented the Ministry of Foreign Affairs in signing a condolences book at the American Cultural Center yesterday in memory of the late US president Ronald Reagan. Representatives of many other countries stationed in Taipei also showed up at the center to sign the book of condolences. The center, located at the International Trade Building on Keelung Road in Taipei, will be open from 8am to 5pm on Monday for those who wish to sign the book. The center will be closed on Tuesday, which the US government has declared a national day of mourning.
■ Education
CIB director gets PhD
Hou You-yi (侯友宜), director of the Criminal Investigation Bureau (CIB) under the National Police Administration, received a doctoral degree in criminology from Central Police University's Graduate Institute of Criminology yesterday. Hou said he had used his leisure time in the afternoons and evenings over the past five years to complete his doctoral program. Hou's dissertation focused on 42 sensational rape-murder cases reported in Taiwan over the past decades. Hou was among the 685 students who graduated from the university's undergraduate and graduate programs yesterday. President Chen Shui-bian (陳水扁) attended the school's commencement ceremony for the third year running.
■ International
Taiwan hosts world scouts
More than 8,000 college students from some 80 countries will travel to Taiwan to take part in the 12th World Scout Moot to be held from July 30 to Aug. 10, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs said yesterday. Speaking at a regular news conference, Lu Ching-lung (呂慶龍), vice chairman of the foreign ministry's NGO Affairs Committee, said the ministry is assisting the Taiwan Scouts Association in organizing the world scout jamboree.
■ Travel
New Aussie visa services
The Australian Commerce and Industry Office (ACIO) in Taipei completed the refurbishment of its offices yesterday and will upgrade its visa services due to the increasing number of Taiwanese tourists and students visiting Australia. The ACIO issued some 76,000 visas for Taiwan people last year, mainly for tourism and study purposes. Expecting a flood of visa applications this summer, the ACIO will now offer more convenient visa services, which will allow applicants to collect information or apply for visas via the Internet. Those interested can visit the ACIO's Chinese Web site: www.australia.org.tw/visas or the Web site of the Australian government's Department of Immigration and Multicultural and Indigenous Affairs: www.immi.gov.au.
■ Politics
Lin vows no Paal apology
Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) Legislator Lin Chung-mo (林重謨) yesterday refused to apologize to American Institute in Taiwan Director Douglas Paal for calling him a "vicious dog." "I have only one word for him and that is: Never!" Lin said. Lin made the remark in response to a request filed by Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) Legislator Sun Kuo-hua (孫國華) during a morning session at the legislature. Sun said that Lin should apologize for his offensive words and deeds against Paal and proposed that President Chen Shui-bian (陳水扁) lead Lin to see Paal and offer the apology.
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