DIPLOMACy
Laplanche to head EETO
A French envoy is expected to assume his post in Taiwan as head of the European Economic and Trade Office (EETO) in Taipei later this week, filling a position that has been vacant since early this year. Frederic Laplanche, who served as the office’s deputy director in Taipei from 2004 to 2008, will assume the EETO’s top spot tomorrow, the office said yesterday. Laplanche holds degrees in political science and Chinese from the Paris Institute of Political Studies and the French National Institute of Oriental Languages and Civilizations, according to an EETO statement. He worked at the French embassy in Beijing from 2000 to 2004 before being assigned to Taipei. He returned to France in 2008 to serve as head of the Far East Division at the French Ministry of Foreign Affairs. Laplanche is filling the vacancy left by Guy Ledoux, who was assigned to the Philippines earlier this year after his term in Taiwan expired.
CRIME
Number of scams down: Ma
President Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九) said yesterday that the number of telecoms and Internet scams had declined significantly over the past several months thanks to closer cross-strait cooperation on fighting crime. A thaw in relations across the Taiwan Strait and hard work by the country’s law enforcement authorities contributed to the lower fraud rate, but the primary factor was a judicial and crime-fighting agreement between Taiwan and China, Ma said in a speech. Under the agreement, more than 7,000 suspects have been rounded up in China, Taiwan and several Southeast Asian countries over the past several years, he said. Improved cross-strait ties have not only helped Taiwanese businessmen make more money in China and brought more Chinese tourists to Taiwan, but have also contributed to a significant drop in crime, he said.
MEDIA
CNA launches Japan site
The government-funded Central News Agency (CNA) launched a Japanese-language news Web site yesterday as a first step toward building an information bridge with Japan. The Web site (japan.cna.com.tw) will provide real-time news stories about Taiwan, as well as travel and tourism information, and art and cultural news, CNA said on Sunday. Taiwan’s first Japanese-language news Web site will focus its news coverage on headline news, basic historical and geographic background stories and a wide array of photos, it said. CNA is aiming to become “Taiwan’s eye on the world and the world’s window on Taiwan” by linking Taiwan and the rest of the world through a wide range of multimedia offerings, with the latest initiative extending its reach to Japan.
DIPLOMACy
MAC minister to visit HK
Mainland Affairs Council (MAC) Minister Lai Shin-yuan (賴幸媛) was expected to leave for Macau yesterday to host a ceremony to unveil the new name and signboard of Taiwan’s representative office in the territory today. Lai will then travel to Hong Kong tomorrow to officiate at a similar event for Taiwan’s office in Hong Kong. On July 4, the minister announced that the two offices would be renamed. The Taipei Economic and Cultural Center in Macau will change its name to the Taipei Economic and Cultural Office in Macau. In Hong Kong, what was once the Chung Hwa Travel Service in Hong Kong will now be called the Taipei Economic and Cultural Office in Hong Kong. Lai will fly back to Taiwan on Thursday.
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