DIPLOMACY
AIT’s Burghardt to visit
American Institute in Taiwan (AIT) Chairman Raymond Burghardt will arrive in Taipei tomorrow for a five-day visit, during which he will meet with President Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九) and other political and business leaders, the AIT said yesterday in a press release. It declined to specify the purpose of Burghardt’s trip, but said that he visits the country twice a year for routine exchanges of ideas. This will be Burghardt’s 11th trip to Taiwan since his appointment as AIT chairman in February 2006. Burghardt last visited Taiwan in January, when he briefed local officials on Chinese President Hu Jintao’s (胡錦濤) state visit to the US and met with Democratic Progressive Party Chairperson Tsai Ing-wen (蔡英文).
POLITICS
Ma backs Chen’s column
Former president Chen Shui-bian (陳水扁) should be allowed to publish political commentaries from behind bars, the Apple Daily cited President Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九) as saying in an interview. “Basically an inmate should be entitled to the freedom of speech,” Ma told the paper when asked to comment on Chen’s case. He said the Constitution restricts inmates’ physical freedom rather than their freedom of speech and that Chen’s writing should be tolerated as long as he does not advocate violence or insubordination, the newspaper said. Chen and his supporters have accused the Ma administration of violating his freedom of speech after Taipei Prison authorities barred him from publishing a political column in Next Magazine. Prison officials cited concerns that Chen’s articles might be bad for jail discipline.
ENTERTAINMENT
Hu gaga over Gaga
Greater Taichung Mayor Jason Hu (胡志強) said yesterday he was probably Lady Gaga’s biggest fan in Taiwan. He said he wrote to the US singer two years ago and recently invited her to visit Taichung after he found out she would be touring Asia this year, even though Taiwan was not on her initial itinerary. The singer is scheduled to arrive on Friday and meet fans at a promotional album launch in Taichung on July 3. Hu said he did not promise Lady Gaga anything if she came, but suggested a great performance venue — the Taichung Arena. “This is what I mean by saying never give up,” Hu said. “When everyone said this was impossible, I believed that if you stick with it and don’t give up, it will happen eventually.”
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