Premier Wu Den-yih (吳敦義) departed yesterday for Burkina Faso, where he will attend the inauguration on Dec. 20 of President Blaise Compaore on behalf of President Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九).
Wu will be the first Taiwan premier to visit the West African ally since the two countries resumed diplomatic ties in 1994. It is also Wu’s first overseas trip in his capacity as premier.
During his one-week stay in Burkina Faso, Wu will visit a new national hospital that was constructed with a loan from a Taiwan bank and guaranteed by the Taiwan government. The national hospital is scheduled to open next year.
Wu is heading an 18-member delegation that includes Minister of Foreign Affairs Timothy Yang (楊進添), Minister of the Council of Labor Affairs Jennifer Wang (王如玄) and Tao Wen-lung (陶文隆), secretary general of the government--operated International Cooperation and Development Fund.
Earlier in the day, in his last public activity in Taipei before his departure, Wu spoke of Taiwan’s “One Lamp in Africa” program, which aims to bring light to the homes of disadvantaged Burkina Faso students.
Wu said many students in that country are forced to study on the streets at night by the light of street lamps because they do not have lights at home.
Under the program, Taiwan has developed a solar-powered LED lamp equipped with a solar cell that lasts up to 4.5 hours and allows students to study at home, Wu said.
The children can charge the solar cell during the day and bring it home after school, he added.
The program is being supported by the World Bank, which has placed orders with Taiwanese businesses for the LED lamps for delivery as aid to African countries, Wu 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
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