■ Rescue
19 crew saved near Penghu
A Panamanian cargo ship that ran aground near Penghu on Thursday due to engine failure and stormy weather sank at around 1am yesterday, with all but one of the 20 crew members rescued, authorities reported. The first mate of the Shinko Ocean remains missing after falling overboard during Thursday's mishap and a search effort is continuing. The 19 other crew members were airlifted to Makung after being rescued by the Seagull Squad. The ship sent out an SOS at around 2pm on Thursday after the vessel ran aground. A Seagull rescue helicopter took off from an air base in Chiayi and airlifted the crewmembers in a marathon series of shuttles, to Makung Airport, where they were transferred to two hospitals in Penghu for treatment.
■ Religion
Buddhist master dies
Tibetan Buddhist master Khenpo Loden Rinpoche died recently of acute pneumonia days after arriving in Taiwan for a promotional tour, sources said yesterday. The 79-year-old Loden arrived in Taiwan on Feb. 22 to promote Tibetan Buddhism but became ill two days later. He was rushed to the Chang Gung Memorial Hospital in Linkou, Taoyuan County, but died early the next morning, according to a spokesman for the Vajrayana Buddhist Institute, which invited him to Taiwan. The body of the Tibetan Buddhism master, who was from the Indian state of Sikkim, was cremated in accordance with Tibetan Buddhist custom. Loden's ashes will be kept in Taiwan for a period of time for his disciples to pay their respects before being returned to Sikkim. Loden, who had presided over important rituals with the Dalai Lama, was one of the most revered and influential Tibetan Buddhist masters in Sikkim.
■ Politics
Wang defends task force
The Legislative Yuan has the right to address cross-strait affairs as long as it acts within the law and does
not encroach upon the diplomatic and administrative functions of the president, Legislative Speaker Wang Jin-pyng (王金平) said yesterday. Wang made the remarks a day after a majority of legislators decided to reconvene a task force handling cross-strait affairs, even as lawmakers from the ruling Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) cautioned that cross-strait ties are the responsibility of the president. The DPP and its ally, the Taiwan Solidarity Union (TSU), said yesterday that they were opposed to a re-activation of the cross-strait task force and would not allow members of their parties to join it. The TSU also said the task force in the previous legislature was ineffectual. Wang said that if the DPP and the TSU refuse to nominate delegates, that was their right and would not affect the operations of the task force.
■ Education
New scholarship announced
National Taiwan University (NTU) said yesterday that it will set up a scholarship program allowing students from member countries of the University Mobility in Asia and the Pacific (UMAP) to pursue advanced studies in Taiwan. Chou Chia-pei (周嘉蓓), director of the NTU International Academic Exchange Center, made the announcement during a UMAP board meeting attended by 20 representatives from 11 member countries. The UMAP program is a three-year student exchange plan effective until 2008. Ten students from association member countries will study at local universities each year, while 10 Taiwanese students will go to those countries to study, Chou said. Each student will receive NT$150,000 (US$4,840) annually, she said.
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