■ Diplomacy
US policy unchanged
US policy toward Taiwan remains unchanged, even though a Washington official has referred to Taiwan and China as "two countries," Ministry of Foreign Affairs deputy spokesman Wang Chien-yeh (王建業) said yesterday. White House spokesman Scott McClellan said during a news briefing held Thursday in Washington that the US' cross-strait policy remains unchanged after visits to China by Taiwan's opposition leaders. McClellan said Washington did not think there should be any unilateral change to the cross-strait status quo and believed that cross-strait peace and stability depended heavily on "dialogue between the two countries." Wang said that despite the "two countries" wording, Washington was basically repeating its long-standing stand on cross-strait issues.
■ Society
Man indicted for playing CDs
The owner of the clothing retail chain Unicorn was indicted yesterday for broadcasting music from CDs in the company's shops. The Taipei Prosecutor's Office said CDs cannot be played in a public place without authorization, and that the owner of the shops had violated copyright laws. The prosecutors said it was the first case in which a shopowner was indicted for playing a CD in a shop. Restaurants, supermarkets and convenience stores violate the law if they play CDs in their shops without authorization, prosecutors said. For example, prosecutors said, the Sogo department store chain pays music companies about NT$500,000 every year to be able to broadcast CDs in its stores. A music industry association said the case was a major success for IPR protection.
■ Education
Universities to cooperate
National Sun Yat-sen University in Kaohsiung and the University of Washington in the US announced they would promote bilateral exchanges and cooperation. Officials from National Sun Yat-sen University's College of Engineering said that in addition to student exchanges, there will also be a "dual master's degree" mechanism. In response to the Ministry of Education's call to upgrade international competitiveness and encourage cooperation with international universities, the officials said they have had several discussions with University of Washington officials and that both sides agreed to establish an exchange platform between the faculties of the two schools. They pointed out that both schools bear the names of the respective founding fathers of the two nations, which they said is especially significant for bilateral exchanges. Under the exchange program, graduate students, after competing the first year of a master's program at National Sun Yat-sen University, can go to the University of Washington to study after a qualification review by the US school.
■ Politics
DPP has high election hopes
Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) officials said yesterday they were "cautiously optimistic" about the party's performance in today's National Assembly elections. The DPP feels it has managed to boost its support rating after President Chen Shui-bian (陳水扁) appeared on various TV shows over the past week to clarify the party's policy, the officials said. They said the party is now engaging in a close competition with the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) and will become the largest party in the National Assembly if it is able to seize more than 40 percent of the vote in today's elections.
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