■ Diplomacy
Yu to visit Washington today
Presidential Office Secretary-General Yu Shyi-kun is scheduled to arrive in Washington today for a three-day visit. During his stay in the US capital, Yu will visit the Taiwanese mission and meet US officials and think tank members. Yu will have dinner with Taiwanese expatriates on Friday night before going back to New York on Saturday. He is set to depart for Taipei on Sunday. Yu is currently in New York. He will travel to Washington by train after attending his son's commencement at Columbia University today.
■ Politics
Chen, DPP elite to hold talks
President Chen Shui-bian (陳水扁) is slated to meet senior legislators from various factions in the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) today to discuss major policy issues in the wake of the National Assembly elections, a DPP lawmaker said yesterday. According to Legislator Lee Chun-yi (李俊毅), Chen has invited 20 senior DPP lawmakers, some of whom are leading figures of major DPP factions, to a tea party at the Taipei Guest House near the Presidential Office this afternoon. To the best of his understanding, Lee said, Chen will brief lawmakers from various DPP factions, including the New Tide faction and the Justice Alliance, on domestic political development and the government's major policy goals following Saturday's National Assembly elections. Before the election, some senior DPP lawmakers criticized Chen's allegedly wavering attitude toward the controversial visits to rival China by two opposition leaders -- Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) Chairman Lien Chan (連戰) and People First Party Chairman James Soong (宋楚瑜).
■ Environment
EPA still fighting fire ants
The Environmental Protection Administration (EPA) is keeping up its pest control and prevention efforts to eradicate red fire ants, nearly two years after the pest was first detected in Taiwan. A series of seminars are scheduled to be held at environmental protection departments around the nation this month, an EPA official said on yesterday. The official said that the public should be reminded of the dangers of the imported pest. The fire ants, native to Brazil, Paraguay and Argentina, were first spotted in increasing numbers in the Taoyuan and Chiayi areas in September 2003. Farmers consider the ants a nuisance because of their painful sting. The fire ants become aggressive when their hills are disturbed. Although they do not endanger crops, their bite is extremely painful and can even be fatal for the small number of people who are allergic to it. The official reminded people that they should never try to touch or disturb anthills if they discover the invader species in or around their home, and that they should immediately call 0800-095-590 for assistance.
■ Society
Mortuaries go online
The Taipei Mortuary Services Office will from June accept applications from bereaved families to broadcast memorial services for their loved ones online, officials said yesterday. The office has installed cameras at the Chingyang Hall of its Second Funeral Parlor to facilitate the broadcasts, according to the officials. Simultaneous viewing by 30 to 50 Internet users will be allowed and the viewers will also be able to leave messages on-line to mourn the dead, they said. As an alternative, the bereaved families can hire professional cameramen and apply for temporary Internet hosting for the broadcast, they 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