■ Education
Nanking loses prominence
The "Rape of Nanking" will no longer feature prominently in the nation's revised history textbooks, a newspaper said yesterday. The Chinese-language United Evening News said that in the new versions of history textbooks, which no longer consider China's history to be national history, only passing references are made to the massacre. A textbook from one publish-ing house does not mention the World War II atrocities committed by the Japanese in China, while textbooks from four other publishers only make a brief reference to it. The Ministry of Education decides the content of the textbooks, but they are printed by private publishers. The "Rape of Nanking" refers to the massacre which began after Nanking, then the capital of China, fell to Japanese troops on Dec. 13, 1937. Japanese soldiers carried out acts of rape, execution, arson and looting in and around Nanking that lasted for six weeks. China estimates the total death toll at about 300,000.
■ Environment
Cherry saplings planted
The Southern Taiwan Science Park Administration held a ceremony in the park in Tainan on Saturday to plant 250 cherry saplings donated by a Japanese cherry cultivation association. A tablet commemorating the friendship between Taiwan and Japan was also unveiled. Chimei Group founder Shi Wen-long (許文龍), presidential adviser Huang Kun-hu (黃崑虎) and scores of Japanese businesspeople were present at the ceremony, according to a park spokesman. The Japanese businesspeople performed Japanese folk songs, accompanied by Shi on mandolin, with the aim of creating the atmosphere of cherry blossoms apprecia-tion event in Japan, the spokesman said. National Science Council Deputy Minister Tai Chien (戴謙) said that there were 15 Japanese firms in the park, which has established the closest relationship with Japan among all of the nation's science parks. He said the cherry cultivation association donated the saplings because of a suggestion from Huang and the result will be that people working in the park and local residents will be able to enjoy Japanese cherry blossoms.
■ Economy
Post office posts record
Total postal savings deposits surpassed NT$4 trillion (US$123 billion) last year, marking a record high, according to the latest tallies released by the Ministry of Transportation and Communications. The statistics showed that total postal savings deposits last year increased by NT$363.8 billion, or 9.9 percent, over 2005. The postal savings system accounted for 15.4 percent of total deposits among all financial institutions in the nation last year, representing a 0.6 percent year-on-year increase, while the total value of postal simple life insurance was NT$830 billion, a decrease of NT$ 23.3 billion, or 2.7 percent, compared with the previous year. The value of money orders transferred by postal services reached NT$1,491.1 billion, posting an increase of NT$85.8 billion, or 6.1 percent, year-on-year. Meanwhile, a total of 17.9 million postal parcels were delivered last year, or 49,000 parcels on average per day. This represents a 13.5 percent growth over the previous year, marking the fourth consecutive yearly rise. One area did see a decline. The number of letters posted reached 2.66 billion, or an average of 7.3 million per day.
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