Saying that "overseas Taiwanese are important assets to Taiwan," President Chen Shui-bian (陳水扁) yesterday called on Taiwanese expatriates to promote bilateral civil exchanges and cooperation when they are abroad.
The president yesterday received a group of Taiwanese based in Thailand at the Presidential Office.
"Although Taiwan does not have official diplomatic ties with Thailand, our countries have been maintaining quite substantial relations for a long time," the president said.
Chen also lauded the contribution of overseas Taiwanese in promoting civil exchanges between Taiwan and Thailand.
"More than 720,000 Taiwanese visit Thailand annually for tourism or business trips, which demonstrates that the two countries share close and amicable relations," Chen said.
"Since everybody knows of Taiwan's difficult diplomatic situation, we are willing to develop all forms of relations with countries that are friendly to us," he said.
Referring to the most recent World Competitiveness Yearbook by the International Institute for Management Development, Chen said the government was determined to carry out reforms to toughen up the country's overall competitiveness.
According to the Swiss institute, Taiwan's global competitiveness moved up one notch to 11th place this year. In 2003 Taiwan was in 17th place.
Chen yesterday also received a delegation from Swaziland led by Economic Planning and Development Minister Absalom M.C. Dlamini. The president expressed his gratitude for Swaziland's long-term support.
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