■ Earthquake
Taipei rocked by tremor
A strong earthquake shook buildings in northern Taiwan, including Taipei, yesterday, but no damage or casualties were immediately reported. The 5.8-magnitude quake struck at 3:32pm. Its epicenter was under the ocean, 50km northeast of Suao, the Central Weather Bureau said, at a depth of about 10km.
■ Diplomacy
Chen confirms appointment
Minister of Foreign Affairs Mark Chen (陳唐山) confirmed yesterday that Michel Lu (呂慶龍), vice chairman of the ministry's NGO (non-governmental organization) Affairs Committee and a former ambassador to Haiti, is to succeed Richard Shih (石瑞琦) as the ministry's spokesman and director general of the Department of Information and Cultural Affairs. Lu, fluent is French, has been one of the planners of the country's annual bid to enter the World Health Organization.
■ Disaster Relief
Typhoon aid offered
Several associations for Taiwanese businesspeople in China plan to donate funds to aid in alleviating the destruction brought about by Typhoon Mindulle, according to reports yesterday. The president of a Taiwanese business people's association in the city of Shantou in Guangdong Province told reporters that he would be bringing the issue up with the heads of other Taiwanese businesspeople's associations in order to garner support and work out a plan for contributions. In addition, China's semiofficial Association for Relations Across the Taiwan Strait (ARATS) sent correspondence via fax to its Taiwanese counterpart, the Straits Exchange Foundation, expressing concern regarding the aftermath of Mindulle in Taiwan.
■ Education
English teachers needed
Owing to the shortage of English teachers at elementary schools, the Ministry of Education yesterday announced that teachers who score more than 213 on the computer-based TOEFL (Test of English as a Foreign Language) or pass the third level of Taiwan's General English Proficiency Test (GEPT) can teach English in elementary schools. According to the ministry's policy, pupils in grade-three or above are required to take English courses beginning in the fall semester next year. However, only Taipei City, Taipei County, Hsinchu City and Hsinchu County have enough eligible English teachers, said Wu Tsai-shung (吳財順), the director of the ministry's Department of Elementary and Junior High School Education. Therefore, Wu said that the ministry decided to loosen the qualifications for English teachers and will not limit teachers who majored in English Literature to be English teachers, since they only need to teach pupils simple English dialogue.
■ Crime
Starlet faces prosecution
Taipei prosecutors decided on Monday to officially begin their investigation toward film star Brigitte Lin (林青霞) who allegedly displayed her ballot publicly during the presidential election. Prosecutors said that they have received five complaint calls over this matter. After they talked to witnesses and Lin, they decided to launch their official investigation into the case. Usually, when prosecutors launched their official investigation, it was a sign that they have collected some sufficient evidence to prove the subject person guilty.
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