■ DIPLOMACY
Computers for Honduras
Taiwan will be happy to help develop information and computer education in major cities in Honduras, President Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九) told outgoing Honduran Ambassador Marlene Villela de Talbot yesterday. Ma said he learned during the inauguration of Honduran President Porfirio Lobo Sosa in January that Lobo was very concerned about how to give his people better access to computer education. With Taiwan’s success in expanding the APEC Digital Opportunity Center (ADOC) project, the government plans to help develop computer science education in Honduras, Ma said. The ADOC project was initiated by Taiwan at the 2004 APEC forum with the aim of “narrowing the digital divide” in APEC member countries. Ma also praised the ambassador’s performance, saying that she is one of the most friendly and capable diplomats in the world.
■ CULTURE
Cloud Gate big hit in Spain
Cloud Gate Dance Theatre enthralled audiences with its Wild Cursive at the Grec Festival in Barcelona, Spain. Thousands of fans flocked to the Catalonia theater to watch the troupe perform over the last four days. The Spanish newspaper El Pais on Saturday ran a special report on the Cloud Gate shows and mentioned first lady Chow Mei-ching (周美青), who is touring with the troupe as its honorary director. The newspaper report said the Cloud Gate dancers were received enthusiastically by their audiences and had many curtain calls at the end of each show. It is the second time the dance troupe has been invited to perform at the annual Barcelona international arts extravaganza. Cloud Gate was scheduled to give its final performance at the festival on Sunday.
■ CHARITY
Donations down
Taiwanese contributions to post-disaster relief work at home and abroad in the past year, especially after Typhoon Morakot, which hit southern Taiwan in August last year and the Haiti earthquake in January, have affected donations for long-term local causes, World Vision Taiwan said yesterday. Chen Wei-jen (陳偉仁), deputy head of the organization, said that while overall contributions to charity have increased, the donations his group received for its usual aid programs are 10 percent short of its projection for the current financial year ending on Sept. 30, or more than NT$100 million (US$3.13 million). Chen said the drop had made it challenging for projects including those that help underprivileged children attend school. The group’s projects support a total of 45,000 children every year.
■ EDUCATION
Hebrew scholarships given
Four students received scholarships presented by the Israeli representative to Taiwan yesterday to assist them in studying Hebrew this summer in Israel. The scholarships were granted by the Israeli Ministry of Foreign Affairs in collaboration with Haifa University. “Of course, we had in the past, and also now, Taiwanese students studying in Israeli leading universities, but this is the first time that Taiwanese students will benefit from our government scholarships,” said Raphael Gamzou, the head of the Israel Economic and Cultural Office in Taipei. The four students are graduate students in International Affairs and Strategic Studies at Tamkang University; National Chengchi University’s departments of diplomacy and Arabic and Fu Jen Catholic University’s French department.
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