■ Aid given to Israeli group
Taiwan Representative to Israel Ting Gan-cheng (丁干城) on Friday donated US$10,000 to Sparrow, an Israeli environmental group. Ting said that although Taiwan was excluded from international environmental organizations, the nation had since 1996 sponsored 110 international nature conservation organizations. President Chen Shui-bian (陳水扁) proposed a world environmental organization earlier this year with the aim of protecting the environment, Ting said. He said Taiwan also needed friends around the world to help it take part in the international efforts to help the environment and that he was happy to donate the money to Sparrow on behalf of the government. Sparrow was founded in 2005 and its members are mostly pilots who are concerned about the environment. They volunteer to fly over Israeli nature conservation parks to monitor poaching, illegal dumping of waste and the destruction of crucial sea turtle habitat.
■ ENVIRONMENT
Penghu gets help on waste
The Kaohsiung City Government has agreed to help the Penghu County Government deal with its garbage problem by handling as much as 60 tonnes of its garbage. Kaohsiung Mayor Chen Chu (陳菊) offered the help during a visit by Penghu County Commissioner Wang Chien-fa (王乾發) on Friday. Wang told Chen that landfill sites in Penghu were filled to capacity. The central government's refusal to allow Penghu County to build an incinerator for fear it might pollute the island chain's environment means that the county is unable to deal with its waste problem on its own. Chen said the Kaohsiung City Government was willing to help Penghu preserve its status as an unspoilt part of Taiwan. The garbage will be transported from Penghu by ship and burned in Kaohsiung's incinerator, at a cost of NT$730 per tonne.
■ POLITICS
Chen denies Chang threat
President Chen Shui-bian (陳水扁) yesterday denied a report in the Chinese-language United Daily News claiming that Premier Chang Chun-hsiung (張俊雄) had threatened to resign should the Cabinet not be allowed to adjust gasoline prices in accordance with the floating pricing mechanism. The Cabinet's insistence on increasing oil prices in accordance with the mechanism has attracted the concern of Democratic Progressive Party presidential candidate Frank Hsieh (謝長廷), who is in favor of government intervention on oil prices. Cabinet Secretary-General Chen Chin-jun (陳景峻) said yesterday that the news report was "groundless."
■ POLITICS
Events mark anniversary
The Straits Exchange Foundation will organize a series of activities to mark the 20th anniversary of cross-strait exchanges. The activities include the screening of a documentary chronicling the 20-year history of cross-strait exchanges -- produced through a collaboration between the foundation and the Public Television Service -- said Michael You (游盈隆), secretary-general and vice chairman of the foundation. The foundation will also hold a two-day symposium at the Grand Hotel in Taipei, starting on Dec. 7, and later publish the papers and symposium minutes, You said. The foundation hopes to create an opportunity to learn and exchange ideas concerning its policies on cross-strait exchanges, he said.
■ Park to stage WWII service
This year's annual Remembrance Day service in honor of those who fought and died in World War II will be held on Nov. 18 at the POW Memorial Park on the site of the former Kinkaseki POW Camp in Jinguashih (金瓜石), Taipei County. The event, jointly organized by the Taiwan POW Camps Memorial Society and the Canadian Trade Office, will also honor the more than 4,300 Allied POWs who were held in 15 forced labor camps around Taiwan. A POW banquet will also be held on the evening of Nov. 17 at the Imperial Hotel on Linsen N Road at a cost of NT$1,000 per person. The Canadian Society is laying on buses for those interested in attending the Sunday service as there is no parking for private vehicles at the memorial site. Reservations for both the banquet and bus can be made by calling Crystal Hsu at the Canadian Trade Office on (02) 2544-3461. More details can be found by visiting www.powtaiwan.org.
■ sport
Kaohsiung ready for games
Kaohsiung meets the requirements to host the 2009 World Games and the city should have no problem staging the games, the head of the International World Games Association (IWGA) said yesterday. IWGA Chairman Ron Froehlich made the remarks after meeting Chi Cheng (紀政), an Olympic medalist who serves as the executive officer of the Kaohsiung Organizing Committee for the World Games. Froehlich confirmed that China lodged a protest with the International Olympic Games (IOC) against Kaohsiung's hosting the World Games, but he said that Chinese Taipei is an IOC member and that it meets the requirements for hosting the games. He expressed the hope that Kaohsiung will make every effort to make the games a success.
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