■ DIPLOMACY
MOFA lauds Japan
The Ministry of Foreign Affairs (MOFA) praised Japan yesterday for shrugging off Beijing's request that Tokyo deny entry to Tibetan spiritual leader the Dalai Lama. MOFA deputy spokeswoman Phoebe Yeh (葉非比) made the remarks in response to a report in the Sing Tao Daily, a Hong Kong-based newspaper, which said that the Dalai Lama would visit Japan at the invitation of local religious groups. The newspaper said Beijing had asked Japan not to grant the spiritual leader entry because he is a separatist. Japan rejected Beijing's request. "We admire Japan for its moral courage in turning down China's unreasonable demand," Yeh said. "Like other Western countries, Japan advocates democracy, freedom and human rights. There is no reason Japan should yield to Chinese pressure."
PHOTO: LIAO HSUEH-RU, TAIPEI TIMES
■ DEFENSE
MND lowers bar on health
The Ministry of National Defense said yesterday it would relax its health exam standards in order to recruit an additional 5,000 soldiers in the near future. Deputy Minister of National Defense Lin Yu-bao (林於豹) said the plan was not complete but that extra recruits were needed to fill vacancies. Lin made the remarks during the legislature's National Defense Committee meeting yesterday morning in response to a question by Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) Legislator Lin Yu-fang (林郁芳). Lin Yu-fang was worried that relaxing the standards would have a negative impact on national defense. Lin Yu-bao said today's wars have gradually become "high-tech wars," which means that a real battle does not necessarily have to involve soldiers confronting soldiers on the battlefield.
■ CULTURE
NYC orchestra to visit
The New York Philharmonic announced plans on Wednesday to tour Taiwan and China, but did not confirm media reports that the US' oldest symphony orchestra would also perform in North Korea. In Taiwan, the orchestra will play in Taipei and Kaohsiung in February. The New York Times reported that the New York Philharmonic would likely visit North Korea. "The Philharmonic has a significant record of touring Asia, but this will be our most substantial tour of the region in our history," said Zarin Mehta, the orchestra's president and executive director. The orchestra was founded in 1842 by local musicians and plays some 180 concerts a year. The New York Philharmonic gave its 14,000th concert in late 2004.
■ CRIME
Web `assassin' questioned
Taipei police yesterday were questioning a man over an alleged Internet threat to assassinate President Chen Shui-bian (陳水扁). Officers said the man, identified by his surname, Dai (戴), had left a message on an Internet bulletin board saying that he would assassinate the president on his way to work yesterday morning. He also invited other users who hate the president to join him. The message "warned" the public to stay away from the presidential residence during the "assassination period" to avoid being accidentally shot by machine gun. Police discovered that Dai had checked into a hotel room in Taipei's Zhongzheng District on Wednesday night. Dai was picked up near the presidential residence yesterday morning and immediately taken to a police station, where officers discovered he only had a few flags in his possession. He was released but police referred the case to the Taipei District Prosecutors' Office on charges of plotting to kill and blackmail.
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