■ Diplomacy
Nauru's Keke visits Chen
Nauruan Ambassador Ludwig Keke presented his credentials to President Chen Shui-bian (陳水扁) yesterday. Keke was accompanied by Chiou I-jen (邱義仁), secretary-general of the Presidential Office and Minister of Foreign Affairs James Huang (黃志芳). Chen said that Keke and Chen Hsin-yu (陳幸妤), his daughter, are both dentists. Keke studied dentistry in Fiji, Australia and New Zealand. Taiwan first established diplomatic relations with the Micronesian South Pacific island nation in 1980. The two countries severed relations after Nauru switched diplomatic recognition from Taipei to Beijing in 2002. Diplomatic ties resumed in 2005. Nauruan President Ludwig Scotty led a delegation to Taiwan for a state visit in March last year. President Chen made a reciprocal visit in September of the same year.
■ Humanitarian aid
Taiwan helps Indonesia
Taiwan will donate US$30,000 in victims' relief assistance to Indonesia after an earthquake struck the region on Tuesday, Ministry of Foreign Affairs spokesman David Wang (王建業) said yesterday. In addition, Wang said that a four-member medical team from Taiwan International Health Action, set up by the government in 2004 to provide overseas humanitarian assistance, will leave for the disaster area in Sumatra today to help with relief operations. Sumatra was struck by a powerful earthquake measuring 6.3 on the Richter scale. At least 70 people were killed and many more were buried under flattened buildings.
■ Cross-strait ties
Lien plans to visit China
Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) honorary chairman Lien Chan (連戰) plans to travel to China next month and meet Chinese President Hu Jintao (胡錦濤), a party official said yesterday. Lien plans to discuss issues including allowing more Chinese tourists to visit Taiwan, the official said, adding that the exact date of the trip, which would be Lien's third visit to China, had not been set. Last April, Lien led a 170-member delegation of business leaders and party officials to an economic and trade forum in Beijing. China could announce a formal, expanded tourism deal next month, the party official said. Under the deal, up to 1,000 tourists could be allowed to visit every day, which analysts say would boost Taiwanese domestic consumption and economic growth. "The tourism expansion idea was proposed to Lien in 2005," the official said. Taiwan now restricts tourist headcounts and routes from the mainland mainly due to issues related to national security. Two-way ties were boosted this month with a visit by the Taiwan-based Straits Exchange Foundation's tourism head, Sun Chi-ming (孫起明).
■ Health
Labels to show fats
Starting next year, all packaged food sold in Taiwan containing trans-fats and saturated fats must be labeled with the amount of fat they contain, the Department of Health's Bureau of Food Sanitation said. The director of the Bureau, Cheng Huei-wen (鄭慧文), said that there has been a steady stream of research at home and abroad showing that trans fats have a negative effect on human health and many restaurant chains such as KFC and McDonalds have already voluntarily stopped using them. "The next step would be to work with restaurants and bakeries to reduce, or even eliminate the use of trans fats," she said.
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