■ POLITICS
Chen Chu scraps China trip
Kaohsiung Mayor Chen Chu (陳菊) said yesterday she had canceled plans to visit China despite receiving approval from the Ministry of the Interior (MOI) on Monday night. Chen told reporters during a break at the city council that she changed her mind out of concerns about swine flu. Chen dismissed media speculation that she scrapped the trip because of opposition from the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) headquarters. “Chairperson Tsai [Ing-wen, 蔡英文] always encourages party members to visit other countries with dignity,” Chen said. Chen was scheduled to leave for Beijing tomorrow to receive an architecture award for public works in Kaohsiung at the annual International Real Estate Federation convention.
■ CRIME
Agency denies rice report
The Agriculture and Food Agency (AFA) yesterday denied media speculation that some of the rice in students’ school lunches may be pig-feed grade. The Chinese-language Liberty Times (the Taipei Times’ sister newspaper) reported yesterday that the Changhua prosecutor’s office said some rice merchants may have bribed agency officials to switch pig-feed grade rice for premium rice used in school lunches across the country to pocket the savings. The price difference between premium and feed-quality rice is at least NT$10 per kilogram. Over a number of years, the profits made by using poor-quality rice may have exceeded NT$30 million (US$0.9 million), the report said. Other media outlets reported that the prosecutor’s office was investigating eight rice merchants. Agriculture and Food Agency Deputy Director Yu Sheng-feng (游勝鋒) rebutted the reports at a press conference.
■ DIPLOMACY
Ma looks to boost HK ties
President Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九) revealed yesterday that the government is planning to establish an economic and cultural cooperation agency to promote bilateral ties with Hong Kong. Ma said interactions between Taiwan and Hong Kong officials have increased recently. As the Hong Kong Government has established a trade and business cooperation committee, the Ma administration plans to set up a counterpart economic and cultural cooperation agency. Ma made the remarks when meeting heads and members of seven Hong Kong-based Taiwanese associations at the Presidential Office yesterday. Mainland Affairs Council Deputy Minister Fu Don-cheng (傅棟成) later said the agency would be established in Taipei and could function in a similar way to the quasi-official Straits Exchange Foundation. Fu said details would not be available until next month or July. Ma said he hoped to see the level of official visits upgraded and educational and cultural exchanges strengthened between Taiwan and Hong Kong. He also hoped to see Hong Kong authorities offer visa-free privileges to Taiwanese tourists.
■ CULTURE
Taichung festival to open
The sixth Compass Taichung International Food and Music Festival will take place on Saturday and Sunday at the Taichung Art Museum Parkway, two blocks south of the National Taiwan Museum of Fine Arts. The event will run from 2pm to 10pm each day and will showcase the best of central Taiwan’s international dining, nightlife and entertainment sector at around 50 booths run by local restaurants, hotels, bars and cafes. The festival will also feature live music from about 15 foreign and local bands and musicians. More information is available from Compass Magazine at 04-2358-5466.
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
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
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