■ Legal system
Swiss court blocks papers
Switzerland will only hand over bank documents to Taiwan relating to a decades-old corruption scandal if Taipei guarantees that it will refrain from using the death penalty in the case, the Swiss Supreme Court ruled yesterday. The tribunal upheld an appeal from the family of former arms dealer Wang Chuan-pu (汪傳浦) that previous Taiwanese assurances were non-binding and had to be improved. The case concerns allegations that the French firm Elf Aquitaine used kickbacks in the early 1990s to persuade French authorities to approve the sale of six frigates to Taiwan, and to encourage Taipei to buy the warships in a deal worth US$2.5 billion. Wang was a local agent for Thomson-CSF, the firm which sold six Lafayette frigates for US$2.7 billion. Switzerland and Liechtenstein have blocked funds in accounts allegedly linked to the case.
■ Diplomacy
Ilan County hosts dignitary
The Ilan County Government will fete Palau President Tommy Remengesau with local delicacies when he begins his two-day cultural and sightseeing tour today. A county official said that Remengesau will lead a 12-member delegation. During their stay, delegation members will meet Ilan County Commissioner Liu Shou-cheng (劉守成) and visit the Green Expo, as well as attend the inauguration ceremony of a Hotel Royal branch in Chiaohsi. The county has asked a local restaurant to develop a refined cuisine based on local delicacies for the delegation.
■ Cross-strait ties
Beijing told to show goodwill
China should immediately recommend the granting of observer status in the World Health Organization to Taiwan to show goodwill, instead of manipulating the issue for political purposes, experts said yesterday. They were responding to a media report that Chinese President Hu Jintao (胡錦濤) will offer to help Taiwan participate in the World Health Assembly (WHA) "in an appropriate capacity" either during a meeting with Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) Chairman Lien Chan (連戰) today or with People First Party Chairman James Soong (宋楚瑜) next month. Previous reports have said that Beijing is insisting that Taiwan must use the name "Taiwan, China" to participate in the WHA. The government has rejected the proposal on the ground that it would downgrade the status of the country to a part of China. According to Deng Jou-fang (鄧昭芳), president of the Taiwan International Medical Alliance, the medical sector will welcome the move if China is willing to help Taiwan participate in the WHA as an observer. Ho Mei-shang (何美鄉), an associate research fellow at Academia Sinica's Institute of Biomedical Sciences, said Beijing will only hurt its relations with Taipei if it insists on Taiwan joining the WHA under the name "Taiwan, China." Ho urged both Taipei and Beijing to stop focusing their attention on the political side of the issue, saying Taiwan's participation in the WHA is based on professional and medical needs.
■ Diplomacy
Yu to visit Washington
Presidential Office Secretary-General Yu Shyi-kun will arrive in Washington on May 19 for a three-day visit, David Lee (李大維), the nation's representative to the US, confirmed on Wednesday. Yu has kept a low profile on plans for his US visit. His eldest son will receive a master's degree from Columbia University on May 18. Yu is expected to meet with US government officials and think tanks on his trip.
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