■ DIPLOMACY
Ma meets congresswoman
President Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九) met US Congresswoman Loretta Sanchez, a California Democrat, yesterday at the Presidential Office and described good Taiwan-US relations as something Taiwanese were looking forward to seeing. Since assuming office, Ma said, he has done his best to “rebuild” mutual trust between Taiwan and the US, adding that ties have rapidly improved despite minor incidents such as the dispute surrounding restrictions on US beef imports. Ma expressed his appreciation to Sanchez, a member of the Committee on Armed Services in the House of Representatives, for US approval of two military sales to Taiwan over the past two years, which he said underscored the friendship between Taiwanese and Americans. Ma also called for strengthened security cooperation between the two sides and a resumption of two-way talks over a long-delayed trade and investment framework agreement. He also urged the US to grant visa-waiver privileges to Taiwan.
■ SOCIETY
Group marks Parkinson’s Day
A group of about 300 people with Parkinson’s disease went on an outing in Nantou County yesterday to mark World Parkinson’s Day. The participants, some of whom are confined to a wheelchair, gathered at Chung Hsing New Village for a walk despite their challenged mobility, while others went cycling. Tseng Kuo-hsiu (曾國修), a 47-year-old who has suffered from the disease for 19 years, said he began cycling as a form of exercise two years ago. Cycling is a well-suited exercise for people with Parkinson’s disease because it helps strengthen muscles as well as increasing physical strength and willpower, he said.
■ ENVIRONMENT
Water mostly sufficient
Taiwan Water Corp (Taiwater) said yesterday that aside from the Kaohsiung area, the country’s water reserves were sufficient to meet demand until the end of June. Hu Nan-jer (胡南澤), vice president of Taiwater, said that although water in major reservoirs in northern and central parts of the country had reached normal levels, the south continued to face shortages. He said the company had undertaken measures to increase supplies in the Kaohsiung area, such as drilling new wells, tapping more underground water sources and deepening and dredging reservoirs. If drought conditions persist in the south, contingency measures would be put in place under the supervision of the Ministry of Economic Affairs, he said.
■ ENVIRONMENT
Changhua farmers protest
Oyster farmers protested in Taipei yesterday against industrial facilities near their farms, which they said have seriously threatened their operations. Lin Lien-tsung (林連宗), secretary-general of the Fangyuan Anti-Pollution Association in Changhua County, said an investigative report by Ted Smith, founder of the US’ Silicon Valley Toxics Coalition, found that the wastewater released by panel makers in Changhua was highly poisonous. The 1,000 hectare oyster farms in Yungxing (永興), Wanggong (王功) and Hanbao (漢寶) townships will be highly polluted and even disappear in several years if wastewater from the Central Taiwan Science Park continues to be released into the sea through the townships, Lin said. The farmers also called on the government to immediately call off several industrial development projects in the coastal area, including the Guoguang petrochemical complex, the FPG naphtha cracker in Yunlin and the Central Taiwan Science Park’s sub-projects.
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