EARTHQUAKE
Temblor rocks northeast
A magnitude 5.2 earthquake struck off northeast Taiwan yesterday, the US Geological Survey (USGS) said, but there were no immediate reports of damage. The quake hit at 7:16am 307km off Suao (蘇澳) in northeast Taiwan, at a depth of 108km, the USGS said. It was followed by a magnitude 5.0 quake about seven hours later 50km off nearby Keelung City, the Central Weather Bureau said. Taiwan lies near the junction of two tectonic plates and is regularly hit by earthquakes.
LEISURE
Playboy to open store
Playboy Enterprises said yesterday it would open its first shop in the country next month following the launch of a local television channel. The Playboy store in Taipei will be a free-standing three-story building occupying 230m2 and will be operated under license by Zino HK Ltd, the company said without providing financial details. It was unclear what products the store would sell, but other similar outlets mainly offer Playboy brand-themed fashion items. The local Playboy TV channel was launched last month through telecoms operator Chunghwa Telecom’s digital platform MOD IPTV. Local media said the company had launched a contest to recruit sales girls for the store, offering a monthly salary of NT$100,000 and free training courses in modeling.
TOURISM
County to promote English
Taipei County Commissioner Chou Hsi-wei (周錫瑋) pledged yesterday to help bed and breakfast (B&B) owners and taxi drivers learn to speak English to attract more foreign tourists to the county. Chou said few foreigners visit the county because of the lack of an English-friendly environment. “We should put more effort into building English-friendly tourism, reinforcing an English service certification project and giving B&B owners and taxi drivers the opportunity to learn the language.” The county’s Tourism and Travel Bureau said that aside from encouraging tourism-related staff and businesses to get English service certificates, it was planning to make bilingual signs and publish information brochures and Web sites.
DIPLOMACY
Ma slips up again
President Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九) yesterday made another slip-up when he referred to Solomon Islands Prime Minister Danny Philip as a “general manager.” In his welcome speech, Ma said in Mandarin that he wanted to extend his sincere welcome to “General Manager Philip.” Realizing his mistake, the president quickly corrected himself. It was not the first time that Ma had committed a gaffe since assuming the presidency in May 2008. In April last year, Ma referred to Sao Tome and Principe Foreign Minister Carlos Alberto Pires Tiny and his wife as coming from Burkina Faso, another Taiwanese ally. In October last year, Ma called the Caribbean a “worthless bean” by mistake, when he mispronounced the first two characters in Mandarin as bale, or guava (芭樂). Bale, or bala in Hoklo or Taiwanese, means something worthless or unimportant. In January this year, Ma said he would visit Costa Rica during his planned trip to Central American allies the following week. Taiwan severed diplomatic ties with Costa Rica in June 2007 after the Central American nation switched recognition to China.
DIPLOMACY
Lien picked as APEC envoy
Former vice president Lien Chan (連戰) will attend this year’s economic leaders’ meeting of the APEC forum as President Ma Ying-jeou’s (馬英九) special envoy, Presidential Office spokesman Lo Chih-chiang (羅智強) announced yesterday. Ma appointed Lien to serve as his APEC envoy for the third consecutive year since Ma’s inauguration in May 2008. This year’s APEC economic leaders’ meeting will be held in Yokohama, Japan, on Nov. 13 and Nov. 14, with the theme of “change and action.” Because of Beijing’s opposition, Taiwan’s presidents have been barred from APEC unofficial leadership summit meetings since the country became a member of the regional grouping in 1991 under the moniker “Chinese Taipei.”
DIPLOMACY
Germany signs holiday deal
Germany became the fifth country to sign a working holiday program with Taiwan when representatives from Germany and Taiwan signed a joint statement on Monday in Taipei. Under the joint statement that took effect immediately, people aged between 18 and 30 from Germany and Taiwan can travel and work in each other’s territory for up to one year. Each side has offered a quota of 200 multiple entry visas in the first year of the program. Taiwan also has working holiday agreements with Australia, New Zealand, Japan and Canada. Last year, more than 12,000 Taiwanese youths took part in the program, with more than 9,000 going to Australia, which has not set a quota for Taiwanese participants. Canada has a quota of 700, up from the original 200 because of the popularity of the program, while Japan has a quota of 2,000.
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