■ DIPLOMACY
US posting delayed
Former Mainland Affairs Council (MAC) deputy chairman David Huang (黃偉峰) has been appointed deputy representative to the US, sources told the Taipei Times yesterday. The move was approved by former premier Su Tseng-chang (蘇貞昌), but Su's sudden resignation last week left the documents authorizing Huang's posting unsigned. However, a senior Ministry of Foreign Affairs official said that the appointment is not likely to change under the new Cabinet. The source said Premier Chang Chun-hsiung (張俊雄) would deal with the issue.
■ DIPLOMACY
Ortega cool on Taiwan
A Nicaraguan daily reported on Tuesday there were signs that the administration of Nicaraguan President Daniel Ortega had increasingly alienated Taipei since he was sworn in in January. One such signal was Nicaraguan Foreign Minister Samuel Santos not attending a ministerial-level meeting tomorrow in Belize between Minister of Foreign Affairs James Huang (黃志芳) and his counterparts from Taiwan's Central American allies, the El Nuevo Diario reported. The newspaper said Santos had appointed his deputy, Valdrack Jaentschke, to attend the meeting. Santos would be the third foreign minister to miss tomorrow's meeting. His counterparts from Panama and Costa Rica will also not attend. The Republic of China embassy in Nicaragua did not comment on the report.
■ POLITICS
Lu, Su eyed for legislature
Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) Chairman Yu Shyi-kun yesterday said he is considering nominating Vice President Annette Lu (呂秀蓮) and former premier Su Tseng-chang (蘇貞昌) to be legislators-at-large. Yu said he will put himself in the 18th or 19th place in the list. According to the party's regulations, the chairman is authorized to nominate four candidates for legislator-at-large. The first 12 candidates on the list are considered safe nominations. Yu said that all the nominees he suggests will still need to be approved by the DPP's nomination committee. Lu's office said later that she appreciated Yu's gesture of goodwill but she thought it would be a good idea to give the opportunity to be legislator to someone else because there are many talented people in the party. Su yesterday also declined to be put on the nomination list.
■ HEALTH
Measles alert for Japan
The Centers for Disease Control yesterday urged the public to make sure that children traveling to Japan have been vaccinated for measles. The center said that more than 95 percent of children in Taiwan receive the measles, mumps and rubella vaccine and there have been no cases of measles in this country this year. However, it urged caution as the volume of travel between Taiwan and Japan is high. A measles outbreak in the Kanto region of Japan has spread to surrounding areas.
■ SOCIETY
Men win big at lottery
More men have won big lottery prizes in the first four months of this year than women, the Taiwan Lottery Co said yesterday. It said 72 percent of the 163 winners during that period were men, most of whom live in Taipei City and Taipei County. Some 29 percent of the men who won large prizes are aged between 40 and 49 and work in the service sector or as freelancers. Nearly 30 percent of them purchase lottery tickets every week, spending from NT$100 to NT$500.
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