■ China
Nation not on the menu
Ajisen Noodles, a Japanese fast-food chain operating
in China, has been forced
to change its menus after referring to Taiwan as an independent country, Chinese media reported yesterday. "We are sorry. It is by all means a serious mistake with the copy editing of the menu," said Miao Tianfu, a spokesman for the Japanese-based company. "We are simply a commercial agent for Japanese food. We don't want to see this issue utilized for political purposes." The menus contained a map and a list of the various places where Ajisen Noodles has outlets, grouped by country. Under China, the list
includes several cities such as Shanghai and Hong Kong. But Taipei was listed under the "country" of Taiwan. The blunder was disclosed on an online message board used by students at Fudan University on Sunday, which sparked
a heated response on the Internet, the Shanghai Daily said. All of the company's outlets have stopped using
the menus and the person responsible for the mistake had been fired, it reported.
■ Politics
KMT veteran jumps ship
Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) Legislator Tseng Tsai Mei-tso (曾蔡美佐) yesterday canceled her 42-year KMT membership and announced she would run in legislative elections as an independent. Tseng Tsai made the announcement after losing
in KMT primaries in Yunlin County. Tseng at one time enjoyed solid grass-roots support, but her major patron, Yunlin County Commissioner Chang Jung-wei (張榮味), switched support to two other candidates. Tseng accused the KMT of violating its policies regarding the holding of primaries. She said that Yunlin candidates had originally agreed not to
have primaries and instead negotiate for nominations among themselves. She said this agreement was ignored, with the primaries then being held in voting stations some distance from where her supporters live. Tseng, long rumored to have been in talks with the Taiwan Solidarity Union, denied that she
would join another party and affirmed that she would run as an independent candidate.
■ Politics
Know thyself, and hurry
Independent Legislator Su Ying-kuei (蘇盈貴) yesterday said that he would study Greek philosophy and comparative literature at Cambridge University for one month before running
in December's legislative elections. Su, a lawyer-turned-legislator, was speaking during the opening of a computer exhibition
in Kaohsiung. Su, who
left the Taiwan Solidarity
Union, recently surprised
some observers when he
agreed to serve as deputy
convener of a human-rights committee at the Taipei
City Government. Su also suggested that Taipei Mayor Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九), who is also a vice chairman of the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT), run in the 2008 presidential election, saying that he was the best choice of all potential candidates.
■ Investment
Ma to woo Silicon Valley
Taipei Mayor Ma Ying-jeou will head a delegation
of officials and business executives to California's Silicon Valley from Aug. 9 to Aug. 11 to attract high-tech investors, media reports
said on Wednesday. During
his visit, Ma will lead a presentation introducing
his administration's plan to develop Taipei into a new Asian high-technology
hub. The plan, dubbed the
"Taipei Science-Technology Corridor," aims to develop the capital into the nation's high-tech heartland and invite overseas companies
to make Taipei their regional operations center.
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