■ Diplomacy
Mark Chen starts Rome visit
Minister of Foreign Affairs Mark Chen (陳唐山) arrived in Rome on Sunday for a brief two-day visit to the Vatican. Chen flew from New York to Rome after concluding a two-week visit to the US. He was greeted by Ambassador to the Vatican Tu Chu-sheng (杜筑生) and Representative to Italy Lin Chi-cheng (林基正). This is Chen's first trip to Europe since he assumed office in April. Noting that the EU has recently been enlarged from 15 states to 25 states, Chen said the union will be an important focus of Taiwan's diplomatic work.
■ Diplomacy
Dominican Republic for Yu
President Chen Shui-bian (陳水扁) yesterday appointed Premier Yu Shyi-kun as his special envoy to attend the inauguration ceremony of the newly-elected president of the Dominican Republic, Leonel Fernandez. Cabinet Spokesman Chen Chi-mai (陳其邁) said the itinerary for the premier's visit has yet to be finalized. "The Cabinet will also discuss with the presidential office and the foreign ministry whether the premier should also visit other countries. At the moment, no decision has been made," he said. Fernandez, who was president between 1996 and 2000, defeated former president Hipolito Mejia during the May 16 elections. He will assume the presidency on Aug. 16. Fernandez's Dominican Liberation Party is the minority in Congress and the president-elect would need the support of Mejia's Dominican Revolutionary Party to pass any major bills. The Dominican Republic is one of 26 countries across the world that still recognizes Taiwan diplomatically. Yu would be the second leader to visit diplomatic allies after Chen's re-election.
■ Cross-Strait Ties
MAC unhappy with pilgrims
Some Chinese religious groups that have traveled to this country have been trying to take their message to the people in ways inconsistent with the terms of their visas, Mainland Affairs Council Vice Chairman Chiu Tai-san (邱太三) said yesterday. Chiu said some Chinese religious groups have had "impure motives" behind their visits. Chiu said some groups reneged on agreements made on condition of entry by expanding "stationary" exhibitions or concerts held at fixed locations to "dynamic" excursions, including carrying gods or goddesses from place to place around the country to solicit Taiwanese followers and their donations.
■ Cross-Strait Ties
Business policy unchanged
The government's "active opening, effective management" policy on cross-strait commercial exchanges remains unchanged, Mainland Affairs Council Vice Chairman Chiu Tai-san (邱太三) said yesterday. His remarks were in response to former president Lee Teng-hui's (李登輝) comments on Sunday that many of the difficulties businesspeople are now facing can be attributed to the government's failure to fully implement his "no haste, be patient" policy. Chiu said the government's policy on cross-strait commercial exchanges was changed from "no haste, be patient" to "active opening, effective management" in 2001 in line with the conclusions reached at a cross-party national economic development conference. Chiu said the "active opening, effective management" strategy follows the basic spirit of "no haste, be patient" while accommodating some amendments needed to facilitate companies' global business expansion.
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