■ Politics
CIA document' handed over
Vice President Annette Lu (呂秀蓮) has turned over an alleged intelligence document to the Criminal Investigation Bureau which she received from independent Legislator Li Ao (李敖), the Presidential Office said yesterday. On Wednesday, Li claimed he had obtained a CIA document suggesting that President Chen Shui-bian (陳水扁) had staged his own election-eve assassination attempt last year, hiring two snipers to kill or wound Lu so Chen would get sympathy votes and win re-election. The Presidential Office officials said copies of the document had been forwarded to the task force that investigated the shooting so that its authenticity could be established.
■ Diplomacy
Envoy says Haiti ties strong
Haiti will not cut diplomatic relations with Taipei, Ambassador Yang Cheng-da (楊承達) said on Wednesday. Yang made the remarks after the Washington Times reported that China has been pushing Haiti to sever ties with Taipei in exchange for its vote to extend the mandate for the UN peacekeeping mission in that country. Yang said Haiti's foreign ministry has repeatedly said that the country was unlikely to change its diplomatic policy. He said officials have also confirmed interim President Boniface Alexandre's plan to visit Taiwan next month.
■ Diplomacy
MOFA says visits kosher
The visits of US congressmen at the invitation of the Chinese International Economic Cooperation Association (CIECA) were aimed at boosting trade ties,not political lobbying, Ministry of Foreign Affairs spokesman Michel Lu (呂慶龍) said yesterday. His remarks followed a report in the Washington-based Capitol Update that from 2000 to last year, a total of 34 members of Congress were treated by CIECA and the Chinese National Association of Industry and Commerce (CNAIC) to trips to Taiwan. According to the weekly, the two groups failed to abide by a US law that stipulates lobbying groups must register with the US Congress and the Department of Justice. Lu said CIECA is a non-profit group engaged exclusively in strengthening Taiwan's economic links with the rest of the world. He said that its invitations to US lawmakers did not violate the law either in Taiwan or in the US because the visits did not involve any lobbying or political activities. CIECA was called the CNAIC prior to 2002, he said.
■ Cross-strait ties
Hu urges more contact
Contact between China and Taiwan must be increased to reduce suspicions and misunderstanding, Taichung Mayor Jason Hu (胡志強) said yesterday in Beijing. "Contact is a good thing. It cannot bring negative results," he was quoted as saying by the Xinhua news agency. He also encouraged Chinese tourists to visit Taichung. "Beijing's people are very friendly and cute," he said. "The people of Taichung are also very cute. I welcome everybody to come to Taichung."
■ Health
US to help fund drug study
The US will cooperate with Taiwan in studying whether the use of ecstasy damages the human brain, a Department of Health official said yesterday. The US government will provide US$300,000 over two years for the National Bureau of Controlled Drugs and the Tri-Service General Hospital to study the impact of ecstasy on the brain. Fifty ecstasy users will undergo magnetic-resonance imaging exams so that researchers can see if their brain cells have been changed by using the drug.
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