■ DIPLOMACY
PRC severs St. Lucia ties
China severed diplomatic ties with St. Lucia yesterday and made a formal complaint to the Caribbean country over its decision to restore diplomatic relations with Taiwan, Chinese state media said. Chinese Ambassador to St. Lucia Gu Huaming (古華明) announced the suspension of diplomatic relations and "the cessation of fulfilling all agreements between the governments of the two countries," the Xinhua news agency said. China's Foreign Ministry called the move "brutal interference in China's internal affairs."
■ EDUCATION
MAC rethinks school policy
A regulation revised on Friday by the Mainland Affairs Council (MAC) will allow the children of multinational companies' Chinese employees to study at schools for foreign residents. MAC Vice Chairman Johnnason Liu (劉德勳) said some excellent Chinese workers were reluctant to work in Taiwan because they were worried about their children's education. The revised regulations should increase their willingness to come here. The original regulations allowed multinationals' Chinese employees in the management or professional services sectors to be transferred to Taiwan. After three years, they could apply for their children to be admitted to Taiwanese school. Also under the old regime, the children had to be below the age of 18 and could not stay in Taiwan for more than one year, Liu said. The revised regulations will be implemented pending Executive Yuan approval, he said.
■ TRAVEL
US starts 10-finger scan
Most foreigners wanting to visit the US soon will have fingerprints taken for all fingers when applying for US visas, the US State Department said on Friday. Instead of scanning the prints of just two fingers of visa applicants, as is now the case, US embassies and consulates are beginning to require scans of all 10 digits to better screen out undesirables, the department said. "The department is instituting the 10 fingerscan standard to improve our ability to detect and thwart persons ineligible for visas by raising the accuracy rate in matching fingerscans," it said in a notice published in Friday's Federal Register. The move is part of tighter immigration and border control restrictions enacted after the Sept. 11 attacks that initially required scans of only two fingers from visa applicants. Technological advances now allow for all 10 of an applicant's fingers to be scanned with ease, and devices to do so will be in place at all embassies and consulates by the end of this year, the department said.
■ CULTURE
Animation deadline moved
The deadline for entries by Taiwanese artists to the 2007 Taiwan International Animation Festival has been postponed from May 15 to May 31 to allow extra time for more works to be submitted to the exhibition. The Chinese Taipei Film Archive, a non-profit foundation, has held the annual festival since 2003. The archive urged animation artists not to miss the opportunity to submit their work. A spokesman for the organization said application forms could be downloaded from www.ctfa.org.tw/tiaf/ and e-mailed to tiaf.adm@mail.ctaf.org.tw. Taiwanese works will be one of seven categories at the festival, which will take place in Taipei from Sept. 28 to Oct. 7, with cash prizes totaling NT$1 million (US$30,000) up for grabs. Last year's festival consisted of 332 films totaling 63 hours from 32 countries.
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