■ AGRICULTURE
COA details farmers’ losses
Agricultural losses from heavy rain in central and southern Taiwan in recent days had amounted to more than NT$50 million (US$1.65 million) as of yesterday morning, the Council of Agriculture (COA) said.
Pingtung County had been the hardest hit region, suffering agricultural losses totaling NT$17.92 million, followed by Changhua at NT$11.52 million, Yunlin at NT$10.18 million, Kaohsiung at NT$8.61 million, Hsinchu at NT$1.95 million and Tainan at NT$510,000, COA figures showed. Damage to crops has amounted to NT$50.66 million, with rice, leafy vegetables, cabbage, green onions, cantaloupes and watermelons among the hardest hit. About 1,982 hectares of farmland in central and southern counties have been damaged by the heavy rain and resultant flooding, the COA said.
■SOCIETY
Chinese tourists allowed
Presidential Office Spokesman Wang Yu-chi (王郁琦) said yesterday that the Presidential Office would soon lift the ban on tourists from China, Hong Kong and Macau visiting the building. The Presidential Office building will re-open to the public for sightseeing on weekdays tomorrow following the transfer of power on May 20. The Presidential Office building, built during the Japanese colonial period from 1895 to 1945, was declared a “national historic site” in 1998. The building was first opened to the public two days a year in 1995 during former president Lee Teng-hui’s (李登輝) tenure, and former president Chen Shui-bian (陳水扁) extended the opening times, opening the building to the public from 9am to 11:30am Monday to Friday.
■FESTIVALS
President’s team competes
Despite President Ma Ying-jeou’s (馬英九) last-minute withdrawal from a dragon boat competition on Friday after being criticized for failing to visit flood-hit areas, the Presidential Office still organized a rowing team of officials. The team was led by Presidential Office Deputy Secretary-General Yeh Chin-chuan (葉金川), and competed against the Taipei City Government team led by Taipei Mayor Hau Lung-bin (郝龍斌). A total of 167 teams raced to the finish line at Taipei’s Keelung River yesterday as the 2008 Taipei International Dragon Boat Championships kicked off. The annual dragon boat race is the highlight of the dragon boat festival, which runs through today at Taipei’s Dajia Riverside Park (大佳河濱公園). The city government also invited residents to experience paddling the dragon boats and other activities at the festival, which will run till today.
■DRIVING
Quebec, Taiwan reach deal
Taiwan’s representative office has reached an agreement with the provincial government of Quebec that, starting last Sunday, the two sides would mutually recognize the other’s driver licenses. Taiwanese residents with a valid Canadian driver’s license issued by Quebec can bypass the usual process of a road and written test before obtaining a Taiwanese driver’s license. The same is true for Canadian residents with a valid Taiwanese driver’s license. Those who qualify for the new perk must submit their applications to the Directorate General of Highways under the Ministry of Transportation and Communications in Taiwan, or to the Societe de l’assurance Autombile Quebec (SAAQ) in Canada. For more information, visit www.saaq.gouv.qc.ca/en/reach_us/index.php or www.thb.gov.tw/index.aspx.
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