■ SOCIETY
Hiker dies on Mount Fuji
The body of a Taiwanese-American who went missing last weekend while climbing Mount Fuji in Japan has been found, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs said yesterday, adding that it would offer all necessary assistance to the victim’s family. A Japanese rescue team found the body of Jerry Yu (余宗佑), 30, who was working in Tokyo and went missing during a climb with a group of 20 colleagues, said Peter Tsai (蔡明耀), secretary-general of the ministry’s Association of East Asian Relations. “We received information from Japan that Yu’s body was found at the bottom of a cliff,” Tsai said. “The foreign ministry is now helping members of Yu’s family go to Japan.”
■ HEALTH
DOH works on care policy
The Department of Health (DOH) yesterday launched a panel to work toward a long-term care insurance program. The panel’s main tasks will be to draft a law to create the program by the end of next year, said Day Guey-ing (戴桂英), the group’s deputy convener. The Cabinet has estimated that in the next 10 years, the demand for caregivers will be between 12,000 and 62,000. Asia University vice president Yang Chih-liang (楊志良), one of the planners of the program, said people would most likely be required to hire licensed caregivers if they want to claim insurance coverage. This would affect people who hire foreign workers at lower wages who are not licensed as caregivers, Yaung said. In addition, insurance payments to people who hire licensed foreign caregivers would probably be half the sum paid out to those who hire local workers, he said. This would prevent an influx of foreign caregivers that would drive down salaries for local caregivers or make them less competitive, he said.
■ TRANSPORTATION
Flight routes to change
Starting Wednesday, cross-strait flights will take routes decided on in a deal inked at cross-strait negotiations in April. Civil Aeronautics Administration Director-General Lee Lung-wen (李龍文) said yesterday that flights to and from Shanghai, Nanjing, Beijing and Hangzhou would continue to take a northern route already in use. On this route, Taiwan and China exchange flight control at a navigation point called “Sulem.” Flights to and from Guangzhou, Xiamen and other southern cities that cross Hong Kong air space will now communicate directly with Guangzhou, with flight control exchanging at a point called “Oldid.” Another northern route will be added, with flight control exchanged at a point called “Salmi.” Flights will proceed straight from Salmi to northeastern cities in China, including Dalian, Qingdao, Shenyang and Harbin. “The new northern route will shorten flight time by 24 minutes, while the new southern route will cut travel time by five minutes,” Lee said.
■ POLITICS
Su Chi to meet Saito
National Security Council Secretary-General Su Chi (蘇起) has accepted a request by Japanese Representative Masaki Saito for a meeting, media reported yesterday. Some media interpreted the decision as an “end to a ban” on meetings between senior Taiwanese officials and Saito. The envoy’s comment in May that Taiwan’s status remained unresolved sparked a controversy, with Saito apologizing and retracting his remarks after Deputy Minister of Foreign Affairs Andrew Hsia (夏立言) protested. Media reports claimed that since the incident, senior officials have boycotted Saito, an allegation the Presidential Office has rebutted.
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