A local newspaper reported yesterday that Taiwanese fans were planning to skirt a ban on displaying the nation’s flag at the Olympics by waving the Myanmar flag instead.
The Chinese-language United Daily News said fans would wave the Myanmar flag because, like the Republic of China (ROC) flag, it features a star-studded blue square at the upper left-hand corner of a red backdrop.
From a distance, the two flags look the same.
Under a protocol signed in 1981 between the Chinese Taipei Olympic Committee and the International Olympic Committee (IOC), Taiwan competes under the name “Chinese Taipei” and the ROC’s national flag and national anthem cannot be used at competition venues.
Meanwhile, 10 members of the New Culture Team, a group affiliated with former Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) chairman Frank Hsieh (謝長廷), yesterday launched a “Go Taiwan” campaign, encouraging the public to show their support for the nation’s Olympic team by spreading the phrase online and through mobile text messages.
At a press conference outside the Legislative Yuan, the group suggested that users of instant messaging software change their screen names to “Go Taiwan! Taiwan is innocent” to show that there is nothing wrong or illegal about using the word “Taiwan.”
Cellphone users can also send text messages with the slogan to friends, the group said, and bloggers can post articles and video clips with the slogan on their Web pages.
The slogan should be a greeting for telephone and face-to-face conversations, they said, encouraging the public to show their pride by getting together with friends to watch the Games and cheer the nation’s athletes.
“We should cheer for our own team and shout out our feelings. Let’s shout ‘Go Taiwan’ and cheer for the Taiwanese team without hesitation,” the New Culture Team said.
The New Culture Team also voiced support for Cheerleading Squad for Taiwan captain Yang Hui-ju (楊蕙如), who was denied entry at Beijing airport on Saturday on her way to cheer for Taiwanese athletes.
Yang told reporters upon returning to Taiwan that Beijing airport police questioned her for one hour and went through her luggage before ordering that she leave the country.
Fang Yen-hui (房彥輝), a member of the New Culture Team, condemned China for rejecting Yang.
“The way China treated Yang and [fellow squad member] Lee Kun-lin (李昆霖) revealed China’s true stance against ordinary people,” Fang said.
FLU SEASON: Twenty-six severe cases were reported from Tuesday last week to Monday, including a seven-year-old girl diagnosed with influenza-associated encephalopathy Nearly 140,000 people sought medical assistance for diarrhea last week, the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) said on Tuesday. From April 7 to Saturday last week, 139,848 people sought medical help for diarrhea-related illness, a 15.7 percent increase from last week’s 120,868 reports, CDC Epidemic Intelligence Center Deputy Director Lee Chia-lin (李佳琳) said. The number of people who reported diarrhea-related illness last week was the fourth highest in the same time period over the past decade, Lee said. Over the past four weeks, 203 mass illness cases had been reported, nearly four times higher than the 54 cases documented in the same period
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:
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
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