■ Weather
Typhoon could hit soon
The Central Weather Bureau (CWB) is closely monitoring Typhoon Tokage, a "large" typhoon with a radius of 400km, which has been looming in the Pacific Ocean since Monday. Typhoon Tokage, packing maximum sustained winds of up to 136kph, was centered about 1,900km southeast of Taiwan at 8am yesterday, moving northwesterly toward Taiwan at a speed of 12kph. The forecasters said they'll be monitoring how the northeastern trade winds coming from the north influence the typhoon's course over the following day, adding that today and tomorrow will be the crucial period in terms of determining whether the typhoon will hit Taiwan. The typhoon is expected to bring tremendous amounts of rainfall to Taiwan regardless of whether or not it hits the island directly, they added.
■ Defense
Nuke experiments dated: US
Recent reports that Taiwan conducted plutonium separation experiments refer to events 20 or 30 years ago, a spokesman for the US State Department said yesterday. Richard Boucher made the remarks in response to reports that preliminary samples taken in Taiwan by the International Atomic Energy Agency indicated that plutonium separation experi-ments probably continued until the 1980s. Plutonium is the raw material needed to produce nuclear weapons. Boucher said the reports referred to what happened in Taiwan in the 1970s and 1980s, and that the IAEA is studying the history of the matter. It was common knowledge that Taiwan worked with the IAEA on monitoring measures on the security of plutonium in the 1970s, he said.
■ Languages
Mandarin is official: group
All languages used in the country should be treated as national languages, but Mandarin should be the only official language, a group suggested yesterday. The group, composed of scholars, experts and government officials, made the suggestion while discussing how to preserve and develop ethnic languages prior to a conference titled "Multi-ethnicity and Cultural Development" slated for today. The conference is hosted by the Council for Hakka Affairs in a bid to help preserve the multicultural values in society. The conclusions of the group will be submitted to the conference scheduled for Oct. 16-18 in Taipei. The particip-ants said that the languages of all ethnic groups should be treated as equal, and that they should all be considered national languages. Mandarin will not be the only language with the honor of national language, they said. Establishing the official language must take into consideration the language most people use and the one that is most convenient for communication; therefore, Mandarin is most acceptable, they maintained.
■ Culture
Officials in Spain for exhibit
The Vice Minister of Foreign Affairs Ouyang Jui-hsiung (歐陽瑞雄) along with Larry Wang (王豫元), director general of the ministry's Department of European Affairs, made a low-key departure for Spain on Wednesday, according to the Central News Agency. Ouyang had been invited to host the opening ceremony of an exhibit on contemporary Taiwanese art in Barcelona. According to the report, ministry officials said that the trip had not been made public due to requests from officials in Spain. The report indicated that Spain wanted to boost cultural exchange with Taiwan but that no formal interaction was to be made during the event for fear of provoking Chinese protests.
■ Literature
Competition planned
Registrations are being accepted until Nov. 30 for the first cross-strait cyber-literature competition, organizers said yesterday. The Cyber-Literature Award for romantic fiction is jointly organized by Taiwan's Business Weekly Publications and China's Shantou University Press. The prizes to be handed out total nearly NT$1 million (US$29,500), with NT$400,000 cash to be awarded to the first-prize winner. The stories of the winners will also be published, according to organizers. The word limit for submissions is between 60,000 and 120,000, and the deadline is Dec. 31. The winners will be announced in March next year. For more information, see the official Web site at www.novelnet.com.tw.
■ Integration
Seminars for spouses
The Taipei City Government will host two seminars on Oct. 16 and 23 for foreign and Chinese spouses of local citizens to help them adjust to life in Taiwan and introduce them to the nation's social welfare resources. Many of the so-called "new immigrants" who live in low-income families in Neihu and Nangang lack the basic understanding of jobs, social resources and laws that govern them, city social services worker Chen Pei-ping (陳佩斌) said yesterday. Children's education and day-care are other problems, Chen added. In order to resolve the problems, Chen said officials from the city's Department of Labor, Bureau of Social Affairs and other relevant agencies, as well as representatives of private social welfare organizations such as the Eden Social Welfare Foundation will be invited to the seminars.
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