■SOCIETY
Kaohsiung touts languages
The Kaohsiung City Government launched a drive yesterday to encourage the public to speak their mother tongues on the eve of the UN-declared International Mother Language Day today. The Bureau of Education, the Commission of Indigenous Affairs and the Commission of Hakka Affairs held a news conference to promote the “2009 International Mother Language Day, Speak One’s Mother Tongue Loudly” drive. “In the past, people stressed that language was a communication tool, overlooking the cultural value of their mother language” and some mother tongues have vanished because of this, Kaohsiung Deputy Mayor Lee Yung-te (李永得) said. Lee said Kaohsiung Mayor Chen Chu (陳菊) has instructed schools to offer classes on mother languages even if only one student wishes to learn it.
■DIPLOMACY
Palauan leader to arrive
The Ministry of Foreign Affairs yesterday announced that Palauan President Johnson Toribiong and his wife were expected to arrive in Taiwan for a six-day visit starting tomorrow. This will be his first visit to Taiwan since being elected to Palau’s top office last November. Toribiong served as Palau’s ambassador for seven years before becoming the president. He is scheduled to visit Chunghwa Telecom, China Airlines, the National Palace Museum and various agricultural agencies and schools.
■CHARITY
Ministry sponsors children
The Ministry of Foreign Affairs will sponsor another 10 disadvantaged foreign children through World Vision Taiwan this year as part of its foreign aid program, ministry officials said yesterday. The ministry has sponsored seven children since 1998, and this year it will donate NT$84,000 to World Vision Taiwan to help 10 more children from seven countries: El Salvador, Honduras, Guatemala, Haiti, the Dominican Republic, Swaziland and Malawi, the officials said. It will also earmark NT$1.5 million (US$43,000) to subsidize an Eden Social Welfare Foundation program in which a total of 515 wheelchairs, 150 pairs of underarm crutches, and 10 white canes will be donated to charity organizations in Laos, Vietnam, the Philippines and Sri Lanka, the officials said.
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