■DIPLOMACY
Hong Kong team planned
Hong Kong will set up a committee to boost two-way exchanges and cooperation with Taiwan, Stephen Lam (林瑞麟), Hong Kong Secretary for Constitutional and Mainland Affairs, said. Lam, who arrived in Taiwan on Friday for a visit at the invitation of Taichung Mayor Jason Hu (胡志強), said the Hong Kong-Taiwan economic and trade cooperation committee would be established to coordinate with the proposed Taiwan-Hong Kong Economic and Cultural Cooperation Promotion Committee. John Tsang (曾俊華), financial secretary of the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region, will lead a group of officials and businessmen on a visit to Taiwan after the two committees are established, Lam said. Senior Mainland Affairs Council (MAC) officials confirmed Lam’s statements, saying that the MAC would soon discuss the committee.
■INDUSTRY
Ma promotes innovation
President Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九) said yesterday that a proposed industrial innovation bill needs to be passed soon to encourage all industries in Taiwan to strive for greater creativity. Ma said in his online weekly journal that Taiwan’s businesses should invest more in research and development to enhance the country’s competitiveness. “We should not only use labor, but also brain power to strengthen growth in Taiwan,” he said, adding that the new bill would benefit not only the manufacturing sector, but also the service and agricultural industries. “Innovation can be applied to any product for which a brand can be established and which can create a market niche,” Ma said. Taiwan’s Franz Porcelain is a good example of such a product, he said, adding that the producer had succeeded in using a traditional Chinese craft to create a product that won a top award at the New York International Gift Fair.
■TOURISM
Yushan peak reopens
More than 100 mountain explorers, including two groups of 24 climbers from Japan, set out yesterday to scale the peak of the 3,952m Yushan (玉山), after a ceremony at the Tatachia Visitor Center to mark the reopening of the mountain peak after a five-week winter “tranquil period.” The nation’s highest peak is considered a sacred mountain by the indigenous Bunun people. Adhering to the customs of the tribal people, the Yushan National Park Administration closed access to the mountain trail in observance of the “tranquil period” before the arrival of spring. On Friday evening, the Bunun people held a ceremony and invited Taiwanese and foreign alpinists to join them in celebrating the awakening of the holy mountain and praying for blessings. Jean-Paul de la Fuente, director of the Switzerland-based New7Wonders Foundation, also attended the ceremony.
■NATURE
Whale to return to sea
The Taijiang Cetacean Rescue Center in Tainan City will soon set free a pygmy sperm whale rescued after it was found stranded on a beach in Kaohsiung County two months ago. It was the first of 13 stranded whales rescued by the center over the past decade to survive and be released into the wild. When it is returned to the sea today, it will also be the first pygmy sperm whale in Asia to carry a satellite transmitter, volunteers at the center said. The whale, weighed 94kg and was 1.8m long when she was brought to the center on Jan. 9. It was the first stranded whale on the coast this year, the center 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
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