Architects for post-disaster reconstruction in Japan after the country’s March 11 earthquake and tsunami laid out their vision for recovery in Taipei on Friday and encouraged Taiwanese participation.
“All services of [Japanese bullet train] Shinkansen in [disaster-hit] northeastern Japan have returned to normal operations, thanks to help from Taiwan, but there is more to be done … We wish to work together with friends in Taiwan to create a new future for Asia,” said Kazuhiro Haraguchi, a member of the Democratic Party of Japan (DPJ) in the House of Representatives at a roundtable forum hosted by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs-affiliated Association of East Asian Relations.
The occasion brought together Japanese politicians, academics and business leaders who are taking part in the recovery, who briefed their Taiwanese counterparts on opportunities for cooperation in post-disaster Japan.
About two months after the massive magnitude 9 earthquake and tsunami hit Japan, more than 27,000 people have been reported dead or missing. About 130,000 people are living in 2,500 shelters set up in schools, gymnasiums and community centers.
About 80,000 evacuees are still banned from returning to their homes in the 20km evacuation zone around the damaged Fukushima Dai-ichi nuclear power plant, which has leaked radioactive material.
Japan Research Institute chairman Jitsuro Terashima, an adviser to Japanese Prime Minister Naoto Kan, said the disaster has “changed our way of thinking about nuclear energy.”
“Last June, the energy guideline declared by the DPJ showed how heavily it planned to rely on nuclear energy, with a plan to raise the percentage of electricity generated by nuclear power from 30 percent to 50 percent by 2030. But now, we will look to developing renewable sources. Nuclear energy will still remain in the energy mix, but not as a main source anymore,” Terashima said.
Kenzo Fujisue, a member of the House of Representatives, said Japan aims to turn the disaster-hit areas into new communities which can handle the problems facing humankind in the 21st century, such as an aging society, global warming, food shortages and the depletion of conventional energy sources.
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