■DIPLOMACY
MOFA favors programs
Minister of Foreign Affairs Francisco Ou (歐鴻鍊) said yesterday that cooperative programs would be more effective than gifts in strengthening relations with other countries. Speaking after a Lunar New Year reception held by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs (MOFA), Ou said that gifts symbolized friendship and respect but that “handing out expensive presents” was not an appropriate approach to foreign policy. “The money should be spent on cooperative initiatives instead,” he said. A recent media report said leaders of the nation’s diplomatic allies often asked for gifts such as diamonds, furniture and computers while on state visits to Taiwan. After taking office last May, President Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九) said the value of any gifts to foreign visitors should not exceed NT$5,000. Based on government guidelines, MOFA selects gifts worth no more than NT$10,000 for president-level guests, NT$5,000 for ministerial-level officials and NT$3,000 for visitors at the deputy minister level, Ou said.
■FISHING
Vessel flees patrol
A Taiwanese vessel accused of fishing illegally in the waters of the Marshall Islands ignored warning shots from a pursuing patrol boat and fled to the high seas, Marshall Islands officials said yesterday. Marshall Islands Sea Patrol chief Thomas Heine said the boat was identified as the Fu Yang 168 and that efforts were underway to place it on a regional blacklist banning it from fishing in the Pacific. Meanwhile, the search continued for Japanese fishing boat Chidori No. 5, which was also accused of fishing illegally inside the country’s waters. Heine said both vessels had been seen fishing illegally in the country’s northwest waters last week.
■ENVIRONMENT
'Tranquility' fest begins
A month-long “festival of tranquility” started on Sunday on Yushan, the nation’s highest mountain, during which mountain climbing activities will not be allowed on any of the peaks in the area. The Yushan National Park Administration held a Tsou Aboriginal rite for worshipping mountain deities at the Tataka Anbu/Saddle entrance to Yushan at around noon to mark the start of the month-long closure to all hiking and mountain climbing. This is the fifth consecutive year that the one-month tranquility festival is being observed to help protect the environment.
■CULTURE
Book exhibition opens
The 2009 Taipei International Book Exhibition opens tomorrow at the Taipei World Trade Center for a six-day run with hundreds of publishers from Taiwan and abroad displaying their latest publications. The Taipei Book Fair Foundation, the organizer of the annual event, said the exhibitors would operate some 2,000 booths in the three exhibition halls of the Taipei World Trade Center, with Hall 1 reserved for international publishers, Hall 2 for illustrated and cartoon books and Hall 3 for children’s books. Publishers from the US, Germany, France and Thailand will have a strong presence at the expo, organizers said. Other countries taking part in the exhibition include Belgium, Canada, the Czech Republic, Greece, Finland, Poland, Russia, Sweden, Turkey and Mexico. Admission to the exhibition is NT$100 per person, but visitors traveling to Taipei by high speed rail will be granted free admission by exchanging their rail ticket receipt for a VIP entry voucher.
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