■ POLITICS
Chen Chu may visit China
Kaohsiung Mayor Chen Chu (陳菊) is likely to visit Beijing and Shanghai later this month, which would make her the highest incumbent official from the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) ever to visit China. Chen said at a meeting of the city government yesterday that she would consider visiting Beijing from Wednesday through Friday to attend the Paris-based International Real Estate Federation’s 60th World Congress. Two public works projects that have been completed in Kaohsiung — the Heart of Love River bridge system and the Kaohsiung Central Park MRT Station — have been nominated by the federation for the prestigious Prix d’Excellence awards to be presented during the congress next week. “If I go, I will inform the DPP Central Standing Committee about the trip and file an application for the visit with the Mainland Affairs Council for approval,” Chen said. Meanwhile, DPP Chairwoman Tsai Ing-wen (蔡英文) said that Chen’s visit had nothing to do with cross-strait politics and that it was not politically motivated.
■ TELECOMS
More teens have handsets
Taiwanese teenagers have become increasingly dependent on mobile phones, which have become a must-have item among youngsters, a survey released by the King Car Education Foundation yesterday showed. The survey found that 65.2 percent of respondents owned mobile phones, up 8 percent from a similar survey carried out in 2006. While only one-third of respondents in senior years of elementary school had mobile phones, the ratio increased to 50 percent among junior high school students and 90 percent among first-year senior high school students. Between 43.3 percent and 48.69 percent of the respondents said they would feel lonely and uneasy if they forgot to carry their mobile phones, their phone ran out of batteries or they failed to reach people they are trying to contact. Others said they felt unhappy if nobody called them or if their phone use was limited. Only 12.3 percent of respondents said they would not be disturbed by any of these situations. The survey, which was conducted last month, interviewed 2,358 students ranging from fifth to 10th grades in 18 schools nationwide.
■ CROSS-STRAIT
Legislature to review pacts
The legislature yesterday approved a motion proposed by the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) to refer the three agreements signed in the third round of cross-strait talks to the legislative committees for review. The latest round of talks between Taiwan’s Straits Exchange Foundation and China’s Association for Relations Across the Taiwan Strait were held on April 26 in Nanjing. The two sides signed three agreements covering the launch of regular cross-strait passenger flights, mutual juridical assistance and joint crime-fighting measures, as well as financial cooperation. A joint statement on a proposal to open Taiwan to Chinese investment was also released on the occasion. Initially the government sent the three agreements to the legislature for reference only, meaning lawmakers had no right to review their content. DPP Legislator Lee Chun-yi (李俊毅) said his caucus proposed the motion to highlight the irrationality of the government’s intention to bypass the legislature to implement the agreements. Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) Legislator Lin Yi-shih (林益世) said the KMT caucus was confident that the agreements would clear the legislature.
■ SOCIETY
Panda phone-link launched
Taipei Zoo launched a “Ring-a-Panda” service on Thursday, enabling subscribers to watch the zoo’s two pandas live via videophone. Panda-loving 3G phone users can dial a number and then view either two hours of live broadcasts from the Panda House, or hours of prerecorded footage of Tuan Tuan (團團) and Yuan Yuan (圓圓). An average of 12,500 people have visited the Panda House every day since the pair went on display, making them the zoo’s star attraction.
■ SOCIETY
Clown fish aquarium opens
The world’s first clown fish aquarium opened yesterday, featuring 18 species and nearly 1,500 clown fish. The Aquarium of Anemonefish is located in the Aquatic Ecosystem Exhibition Museum in Chengkung Township (成?Taitung County. The public can see many rare species of clown fish and learn more about the progress in local artificial fish-breeding techniques, aquarium planner Ho Yuan-hsing (何源興) said. The 18 species on exhibit consist of five native to Taiwan and 13 developed by scientists — five in Taiwan’s research center and eight from abroad, Ho said. One of the many special and rare types of clown fish on display is the skunk clown fish, which has a long, straight white line on its back and comes from East Africa, Ho said. Some other rare species are black in color, he said.
■ TOURISM
Hualien awaits lucky visitor
The tourist service center at Hualien train station is looking to welcome its 500,000th visitor sometime next week. Hualien County Tourism Bureau Chief Lin Pao-shu (林寶樹) said the county was planning an activity to award a prize to the lucky 500,000th visitor to the tourist service center since it was established in 2004. The center recorded its 300,000th visitor on Sept. 29, 2007, he said. Tourist arrivals in Hualien, one of the more popular tourist destinations in the country, have topped 500,000 since the beginning of this year, Lin 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