■ Academia
Conference to begin
The Mongolian and Tibetan Affairs Commission (MTAC) will host its 2005 Conference on Geopolitical Relations between Contemporary Mongolia and Neighboring Asian Countries, dubbed simply "Mongolia and Russia," today and tomorrow. A total of 17 domestic and foreign scholars and experts have been invited to attend the two-day conference to discuss interaction and exchanges between Mongolia and three Mongolia-descended republics of the Russian Federation, including the Republic of Tuva, from the perspectives of politics, economics, regional security and culture, according to a MATC news release.
■ Politics
Lu cancels meetings
Vice President Annette Lu (呂秀蓮) called off her schedule yesterday as she suffered from acute gastroenteritis the previous night, said Cho Chun-ying (卓春英), a deputy director-general of the Presidential Office's Department of Public Affairs. "It was not a serious problem after the Vice President was treated in the hospital. The Vice President took a rest at home yesterday," Cho said. Cho related the cause of Lu's pain as told by the doctor that it might due to the food problem. Vice President Lu, who was supposed to pay a visit to migrant laborers at the No. 6 Naphtha Cracker of Formosa Plastics in Mailiao(麥寮) in Yunlin County and deliver a speech to an association of Rotary International in Chiayi City, canceled her entire schedule.
■ Society
Lee to visit US
The US has approved a visit by former president Lee Teng-hui (李登輝), Wu Ming-chi (吳明基), president of the Washington-based pro-Taiwan independence group, the Formosan Association for Public Affairs, said yesterday. Wu denied reports that the US was still considering whether to grant approval for the trip, saying that Lee will be recognized in his capacity as a private citizen and the only thing remaining to be settled is the nature of his security detail, given his status as a former head of state. Wu said his association, which is in charge of Lee's itinerary in Washington, has arranged for Lee to make two speeches, a brief one during a luncheon on Capitol Hill, and one at the National Press Club. The exact dates and times will be announced later by Lee's office, he added.
■ Diplomacy
Ma blames Chen's views
Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) Chairman and Taipei Mayor Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九) expressed welcome yesterday to President Chen Shui-bian's (陳水扁) offer to engage in dialogue with the Chinese leadership without any preconditions but pointed out that the key to reconciliation may lie in how Chen positions cross-strait relations. "Chen's attitude toward how cross-strait relations should be positioned may be a `precondition' to be tackled before Taiwan can engage in any kind of negotiations with China," Ma said. He added that the persistent lack of trust between the leaderships across the strait is also a thorny issue in the development of cross-strait relations. Ma made the comments in response to Chen's remarks in Miami a day earlier that he is willing to hold "rational dialogue" with his Chinese counterpart President Hu Jintao (胡錦濤) without any preconditions.
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