■ RELIGION
Master’s remarks slammed
Buddhist Master Hsing Yun’s (星雲) recent remarks about Tibetans showed he is ignorant of the fact that China has notoriously oppressed Tibetan Buddhism, the Democratic Progressive Party’s (DPP) Department of Youth Development Director Chao Tien-lin (趙天麟) said yesterday. Chao made the remarks in response to media reports that the founder of the Fo Kuang Shan monastery had said during the World Buddhist Forum in China on Friday that there was nothing wrong with Tibetans identifying themselves as Chinese. Chao said the DPP regretted that Hsing Yun had mixed politics and religion, and added that his remarks were tantamount to rubbing salt into Tibetans’ wounds. Chao said the DPP had no comment about Hsing Yun’s comment that “there are no Taiwanese in Taiwan and Taiwanese are all Chinese,” as the Buddhist master was entitled to freedom of speech.
■ DIPLOMACY
Ou departs for El Salvador
Minister of Foreign Affairs Francisco Ou (歐鴻鍊) departed for an eight-day tour to El Salvador last night to thank the incumbent government for its longtime support of Taiwan and to meet president-elect Mauricio Funes to reiterate the nation’s commitment to carry out bilateral projects as promised, Ministry of Foreign Affairs spokesman Henry Chen (陳銘政) said. Ou is scheduled to meet Funes later this week and will also meet overseas compatriots. Ou will not visit any other countries during his trip, Chen said.
■ DIPLOMACY
Ma eager for ties with India
President Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九) yesterday said he hoped to see the nation’s relationship with India further enhanced and the level of visiting government officials upgraded. Ma said the recent cross-strait rapprochement has resulted in many countries that do not have diplomatic relations with Taiwan expressing an interest in improving ties with the nation. He said he hoped to see India take advantage of the rare historic opportunity to further enhance bilateral relations. The president made the remarks while receiving a delegation of Indian parliamentarians of the Bharatiya Janata Party at the Presidential Office. Ma said there was much room for development.
■ POLITICS
Ma praises deceased soldier
President Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九) yesterday praised the patriotism of deceased lieutenant colonel Lee Hsi-wen (李希文), saying he did good for the people and the land of Taiwan. Lee, a native of China’s Henan Province, came to Taiwan with Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) troops when he was 15 years old. He retired after 40 years of military service and died in August last year. Despite his modest income, he donated NT$3 million (US$90,000) to Ying-hai High School in Tainan City and NT$5 million to National Tainan Commercial Vocational Senior High School. During his visits to the two schools yesterday morning, Ma said the core values of Taiwan and its people were honesty, kindness, diligence, loyalty, initiative and tolerance, and that Lee possessed them all.
■ DIPLOMACY
Russian 921 teams coming
A group of Russian search and rescue workers that helped local teams during the 921 Earthquake in 1999 will come to Taiwan this September to take part in an event commemorating the 10th anniversary of the quake, Department of West Asian Affairs Director-General Antonio Chen said. The 921 Earthquake occurred on Sept. 21, 1999, and killed more than 2,400 people. A number of international teams came to help with the rescue effort. At the time, Russia dispatched a group of 83 professional search-and-rescue personnel to help in the search for survivors. Because of China’s refusal to allow Russian planes to fly through its airspace, the help was delayed for 12 hours.
■ WILDLIFE
Eight Matsu islets off-limits
The Lienchiang County Government on Monday barred people from visiting eight uninhabited coral islets in the Matsu island chain under its jurisdiction from today through Sept. 30, when migratory terns will be nesting on the islets to rear their young. The county government’s Construction Bureau said the Council of Agriculture, in accordance with the Wildlife Conservation Act (野生動物保育法), had declared the eight islets a wildlife conservation zone to protect the terns — a seabird species related to seagulls. Bureau officials said the Coast Guard Administration would patrol the area and warned that anybody landing on the eight islets during the six-month period would be subject to a fine of between NT$50,000 and NT$250,000. People who harm wildlife on the islets face a prison term of between six months and five years.
■ SOCIETY
Taiwan night markets travel
A Taiwan night market festival is slated to be held for the second time at Hong Kong’s East Point City from April 23 to April 26, with snacks and dishes from 16 renowned Taiwanese food chains to be showcased. The festival will be jointly organized by the Taiwan Visitors Association, Sun Hung Kai Properties and the Hong Kong & Macau Taiwanese Association to promote tourism. Taiwanese pop diva Jolin Tsai (蔡依林) will act as a spokeswoman for the event and will perform at the festival, along with Aboriginal and other artist groups. Wang Chun-pao (王春寶), director of the Taiwan Visitors Association’s Hong Kong office, said the festival was an important project in Taiwan’s tourism promotion efforts this year. The first Taiwan night market festival in Hong Kong was held last year in a bid to attract more Hong Kong residents to Taiwan. Apart from Taiwanese snacks, which are always a top attraction for Hong Kong visitors, Taiwanese fruit, tea, liquor and fish will also be on display at the night market festival.
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