■ Diplomacy
Downer's comment `unwise'
Australia's opposition Labor Party said yesterday that Australian Foreign Minister Alexander Downer was unwise to break the country's silence on what it would do in the event of a military crisis in the Taiwan Strait. Speaking in Beijing, Downer indicated that the US should not automatically expect
it would have Australian support if China launched
an attack against Taiwan. A
53-year-old military alliance between Australia and the US would be invoked only in the event of an attack on either country "so some other activity somewhere else in the world ... doesn't invoke" the pact, Downer said at a press conference after talks with Chinese officials. Labor foreign affairs spokesman Kevin Rudd said Downer's comment was unhelpful
and broke a long-standing protocol that Canberra
did not comment on hypotheticals concerning
the Taiwan Strait.
■ Tourism
Chinese vistors to missing
A group of 13 Chinese tourists went missing yesterday after arriving in Taiwan late Tuesday night, marking the second major disappearance of Chinese tourists in less than a month, the Mainland Affairs Council confirmed yesterday. According to the council, a total of 17 Chinese tourists arrived in Taiwan late Tuesday night and were escorted by the police to check in at a hotel in Taoyuan County. However, 13 member of the tour group failed to report to their tour guide yesterday morning. The remaining four tourists are now under the custody of the related authorities. The disappearance of the Chinese tourists, which coincided with the annual Hankuang military exercises, was the second time that Chinese tourists have been missing in Taiwan following the disappearance of 17 Chinese tourists in July 20 last month.
■ Welfare
Disability officials arrive
Two executives from a regional forum investigating circumstances facing the developmentally disabled will arrive in Taiwan tonight to assess the situation facing local disabled people, the Eden Social Welfare Foundation said yesterday. Asia Pacific Disability Forum secretary-general Ryosuke Matsui and information committee head Joseph Kwok (郭鍵勳) will also inspect the foundation's operations. The foundation failed in its bid to host the forum's bi-annual conference next year, a failure due to the nation's diplomatic difficulties, the foundation said. However, since Taiwan was a leader in disabled facilities and rights awareness within the region, the forum's executive committee had decided to learn more about the local situation, the foundation said. During their three day trip, Matsui and Kwok will also inspect accessibility for disabled people in tourist facilities.
■ Society
Pregnancy drive approved
The Cabinet yesterday approved a NT$84 million package over the next
three years to promote
earlier marriage and more pregnancies. It hopes to
stop the sliding birth rate by encouraging women to get married before age 30 and conceive before age 35. The average age for women to get married was 23.8 in 1980, but that figure has jumped to the high 20s in recent years. The Cabinet hopes to see
the percentage of married women aged between 22
and 39 wanting one child decrease from 20 percent this year to 15 percent in 2007, and those wanting
two children increase from
60 percent this year to 65 percent in 2007.
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