■ DIPLOMACY
DPP chair to visit Japan
Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) Chairperson Tsai Ing-wen (蔡英文) is scheduled to depart for Japan tomorrow on a three-day visit, the DPP announced yesterday. On her first visit to Japan since assuming leadership of the DPP last year, Tsai is expected to deliver a lecture on current affairs in Taiwan and relations between Taiwan and Japan, said Hsiao Bi-khim (蕭美琴), a special aide to Tsai. Hsiao said that during its eight years in office, the DPP made strenuous efforts to cement ties between Taiwan and Japan and that it hoped Tsai’s forthcoming visit would make Japan aware that even in opposition, the party was still working to help achieve this goal. Hsiao declined to disclose the details of Tsai’s itinerary or which Japanese political figures the chairperson would meet.
■ DIPLOMACY
AIT chair to arrive tomorrow
The American Institute in Taiwan (AIT) announced yesterday that its chairman, Raymond Burghardt, was scheduled to visit Taiwan. During his visit from tomorrow to Wednesday, Burghardt is expected to meet with President Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九) and leaders in Taiwan’s political and business sectors, the AIT said. It will be Burghardt’s fifth visit to Taiwan since he assumed the AIT chairmanship in February 2006. The last time he visited Taiwan was last March soon after Taiwan’s presidential election. Burghardt was the director of the AIT Taipei Office between 1999 and 2001. He concurrently serves as director of East-West Seminars at the East-West Center in Honolulu, the AIT said.
■ DIPLOMACY
MOFA complains to Manila
The Ministry of Foreign Affairs (MOFA) lodged a protest to the government of the Philippines yesterday, restating Taiwan’s sovereignty over islands and reefs in the South China Sea, including the Spratlys. The ministry summoned the Manila representative to Taiwan to issue the protest. The ministry protest came in response to an act signed by Philippine President Gloria Arroyo on Tuesday to annex some islets and reefs of the Spratly Islands and Macclesfield Bank Islands as part of the Philippines’ territory. The ministry called on the Philippines to negotiate with Taiwan on the sovereignty dispute under the principles and in the spirit of the UN Charter, the UN Convention on the Law of Sea and the Declaration on the Conduct of Parties in the South China Sea to resolve the conflicting claims peacefully. Vietnam, China, Taiwan, the Philippines, Malaysia and Brunei each claim all or part of the Spratlys, which are believed to be sitting on large oil and natural gas reserves.
■ EVENTS
Design contest to open
An annual unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) design competition will take place today and tomorrow in Pingtung County, a competition that could provide the county with a new device to uncover illegal gravel operations in its rivers. Organized jointly by the National Science Council, the Pingtung County Government and National Cheng Kung University, this year’s Taiwan Robot Aircraft Design Competition features 60 teams from 15 universities. Only about half of the participants will be from aerospace engineering departments, the organizers said. It will be the 11th competition of its kind, said Lai Wei-hsiang (賴維祥), a professor of aerospace engineering at the university who launched the contest to stimulate creativity in the design of aerial vehicles. Apart from the design competition, there will also be a photo contest and a show of flying skills by top operators.
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