■DIPLOMACY
Burghardt concludes visit
American Institute in Taiwan (AIT) chairman Raymond Burghardt returned to the US yesterday, concluding his four-day visit to Taipei to brief Taiwanese officials and opposition leaders on US President Barack Obama’s recent visit to China. Burghardt arrived in Taiwan on Sunday, only days after a joint statement was issued by Obama and Chinese President Hu Jintao (胡錦濤) in Beijing. The trip was aimed at clearing the air on Taiwan’s place in US-China-Taiwan relations and explaining the US government’s views on a number of other issues, including its economic agenda, US arms sales to Taiwan and the controversy surrounding Taiwan’s relaxation of its regulations on US beef imports.
■CULTURE
Foundation set to sign MOU
The Memorial Foundation of 228 and Taipei City Government are set to sign a memorandum of understanding today to cooperate on projects with the city’s 228 Memorial Museum. Foundation chief executive officer Liao Chi-pin (廖繼斌) said the foundation plans to open its national 228 memorial museum in 2011. The museum will be located on Nanhai Road where the American Institute in Taiwan’s culture and information section used to stand. Since the city’s 228 Memorial Museum was established in 1997, Liao said they have more display items than the national 228 museum, but the national museum’s advantage is that it has more comprehensive archives than the municipal one. “Basically, we want the exhibitions held by the two museums not to repeat or overlap with each other,” he said. “We also want to share our resources ... families of victims do not care whether the museum is national or municipal.”
■CRIME
Baggage handlers nabbed
Three baggage handlers at the Taiwan Taoyuan International Airport were arrested for stealing cash and other valuables from passengers’ luggage, airport police said yesterday. “Three baggage handlers have been detained for stealing a wallet containing ¥20,000 (US$400) from a Japanese passenger’s checked-in luggage. We are investigating if more baggage handlers are involved,” airport police told reporters. The Japanese man flew from Taiwan to Okinawa on Nov. 18. When he retrieved his luggage upon arrival, he saw that it had been opened and the wallet was missing, so he asked Okinawa officials to inform Taiwanese authorities. During questioning on Tuesday, three baggage handlers confessed to stealing from luggage for about two years, a Taoyuan airport police officer who requested anonymity said. “They stole valuables while loading luggage inside the airplane’s cargo hold, as there is no security camera there,” he said.
■CULTURE
Flower exhibition to open
The Shihlin Official Residence Chrysanthemum Exhibition opens on Saturday and will feature about 100 kinds of chrysanthemum, including 22 kinds being shown at the annual exhibition for the first time, Taipei City’s Parks and Street Lights Office said. The exhibition will also feature a number of special activities on weekends including chrysanthemum painting shows, saxophone performances and hand puppet shows. To mark next year’s Taipei International Flora Expo , the exhibition will feature nine zones displaying 55,000 pots of chrysanthemum, the office said. The exhibition is open from 8am to 7pm and runs until Dec. 13. For more information visit www.2009chshow.com.tw.
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