The Straits Exchange Found-ation (SEF) yesterday said it would send a lawyer to Hang-zhou, China, to look into Tai-wanese companies being barred from attending a food exposition there.
The SEF will dispatch lawyer Lee Yung-ran (李永然) and the Taiwanese businessmen's association in Hangzhou to look into the matter, SEF secretary-general You Ying-lung (游盈隆) said yesterday.
Eighty-seven Taiwanese companies that were supposed to participate in a Taiwanese food exhibition in the Hangzhou World Leisure Expo 2006 were prevented from attending the event because the Chinese authorities have not allowed them unload their cargo and equipment. They have also been prevented from decorating their exhibition booths.
The companies had signed a contract with the Taiwan-based Sino Biotech Company, which served as their broker to participate in the exposition.
The exposition is being held by the World Leisure Organization, the Chinese tourism bureau and the Hangzhou provincial government from Apr. 22 to Oct. 22, and is expected to attract more than 16 million tourists.
Up to now, the delay has cost the Taiwanese firms nearly NT$30 million (US$937,500), an SEF press statement said yesterday.
Director of the SEF's Econo-mic and Trade Department Chang Shih-chung (張世忠) said the incident could have been avoided if the firms had chosen to go through a government-delegated organiza-tion, such as the Taiwan External Trade and Development Council, which could have provided more protection for signing contracts.
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