POLITICS
Hau Pei-tsun calls for arms
Defining Taiwan-China relations as “domestic relations with international factors,” former premier Hau Pei-tsun (郝柏村) yesterday said US arms sales to Taiwan were “important international politics” that contributed to maintaining the “status quo.” “How much weaponry Taiwan buys from the US is of secondary importance. The point is to maintain such arms sales,” Hau said on the sidelines of a book launch. The links based on the Taiwan Relations Act must continue — that is the legal basis of the relations between Taiwan and the US, he said. If cross-strait relations were not influenced by international politics, he asked, why would former US president George W. Bush have said that there should be no unilateral change to the “status quo” in the Taiwan Strait? “My reading of the nature of cross-strait ties is that they’re ‘domestic ties with international factors,’” Hau said. “This is my personal view — everyone may not agree.” Hau’s book is titled Hau Pei-tsun’s Interpretation of Chiang Kai-shek’s Diary of 1945-1949.
TECHNOLOGY
Vietnam digital centers open
Taiwan launched four more digital centers in Vietnam on Wednesday and yesterday to help people in the country improve their digital skills. The move raised the number of digital centers built by Taiwan in the Southeast Asian country to 18. The centers were launched under the second phase of the Taiwan-sponsored APEC Digital Opportunity Center, a project that began in 2004 to narrow the digital divide in the Asia-Pacific region. The project provides training in information and communications technology for disadvantaged groups, such as women and children in remote areas and small and medium-sized enterprises that have difficulty accessing computers and digital technology. Taiwan has established more than 70 digital training centers in 10 countries.
AGRICULTURE
Banana prices plummet
Banana prices have plummeted from NT$18 per kilo to NT$6 in just two days, the Pingtung County Government said on Wednesday. Local officials said the weather might have contributed to the price drop, as people seemed less interested in eating bananas during the scorching summer heat. Fruit vendors might also be less willing to sell bananas because the fruit does not store well if temperatures rise above 30°C. Pingtung County Agriculture Department Deputy Director Yao Chih-wang (姚志旺) said the price drop this year was not due to oversupply as farmers had reduced the farming area for bananas to avoid last year’s mistake. At NT$6 per kilo, farmers are selling their stock below cost, said Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) Legislator Su Chen-ching (蘇震清), who urged the Council of Agriculture to send officials to Pingtung to check out the situation.
ENVIRONMENT
Moon jellyfish spotted
Schools of moon jellyfish have been spotted in waters off Nanfangao (南方澳) fishing port in Yilan County in the past two days, with local officials attributing their presence to the reproduction of the algae on which the jellyfish feed. Nanfangao (南方澳) fishermen said on Wednesday they saw the jellyfish for the first time on Monday night and that there were about 1,000 of them. The largest were about 40cm in diameter, a fisherman said, adding that the jellyfish appeared to glow blue in the light of the fishermen’s lights.
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