■ Recreation
Activity seeks foreign friends
Taiwan's olympic committee will hold a sports activity tomorrow at the Da-an Forest Park in Taipei for foreigners living in Taiwan, a statement released yesterday said. The event will include various performances and activities, including shadow boxing, martial arts and "sport dances." Foreign residents in Taipei, including from the Philippines, Indonesia and Thailand, will perform traditional dances at the event, which is aimed to boost Taiwan's friendship with foreign residents, the statement said. The one-day event will be opened by committee chairman Huang Ta-chou (黃大洲), it said.
■ Education
School artifacts on show
An exhibition of artifacts from 21 100-year-old elementary schools will begin on Monday at the Sun Yat-sen Memorial Hall in Taipei. The exhibition, organized by the Ministry of Education, will display items such as photos, yearbooks and clocks made with bomb shells. The items, donated by schools built in 1904 or 1905, will give visitors the chance to get a taste of the history of the nation's education system, the ministry said. It will also mark the first time that Taiwan has held a school artifact exhibition on such a scale. The 21 schools include Tayuan Elementary School in Taoyuan County, Neihu Elementary School in Taipei City, Lungching Elementary School in Taichung County, Mingkang Elementary School in Nantou County, Yichang Elementary School in Hualien and Chengkung Elementary School in Kaohsiung City.
■ Diplomacy
Vanuatu ties in the balance
The Ministry of Foreign Affairs is paying close attention to developments in Vanuatu, spokesman Michel Lu (呂慶龍) said yesterday. Vanuatu's Appeal Court ruled Tuesday that parliament has the right to hold a no-confidence vote for Prime Minister Serge Vohor. Vanuatu's chief grand justice of the Supreme Court delivered a similar ruling on Tuesday over the parliament's plan to launch the no-confidence vote over Vohor's decision to establish diplomatic ties with Taiwan. However, Vohor appealed the ruling. Lu said the ministry does not know when Vanuatu's parliament will discuss the issue, but will pay close attention to the situation as it develops in the South Pacific country. Vanuatu's opposition, which is angry with Vohor's firm support for diplomatic relations with Taiwan, intends to remove him from office.
■ Women's affairs
Islander meet opens
The first Women's Partnership Forum for Pacific Islanders opened in Taipei yesterday as part of efforts to boost mutual understanding between Taiwan and other Pacific Island nations. Thirteen foreign dignitaries, including ministers of women's affairs and interior affairs from Kiribati and the Marshall Islands, as well as female politicians from Tuvalu and Vanuatu, are attending the four-day forum organized by the government-sponsored Taiwan Foundation for Democracy. Foundation officials said representatives of Taiwan's leading women's organizations are also taking part in the forum, and are expected to build channels of communication and exchange with the foreign guests. They hoped the event would allow relationships between women's groups in the Pacific region to improve women's rights and welfare. The foreign guests will be hosted by Vice President Annette Lu (呂秀蓮) at a tea party tomorrow and will meet President Chen Shui-bian (陳水扁) on Monday, the day the forum concludes.
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