DIPLOMACY
AIT finishes stairway
The American Institute in Taiwan (AIT) yesterday announced that a new stairway on land adjacent to the new office compound site in Neihu (內湖) was complete and open for use by its neighbors and the public. The AIT proposed building and paying for the construction of the stairway and received approval from the Taipei City Department of Education to do so, it said in a press release, adding that it has installed lighting for evening use on the stairs, as well as railings and barriers to enhance public safety.
EDUCATION
Taiwanese to head AUMS
A National Taiwan University physics professor was on Sunday elected president of the Asia Union of Magnetics Societies (AUMS), becoming the first Chinese-speaking academic to chair the organization. The school said College of Science dean Chang Ching-ray (張慶瑞) was named AUMS president at a board meeting held in Ningbo, China. Chang will also attend the next International Conference of the AUMS in Nara, Japan, from Oct. 2 through Oct. 5 next year, the university said. The AUMS, established in January 2009 in Japan to promote the development of magnetics knowledge and research in the Asia-Pacific region, is composed of the Magnetics Society of Japan, the Taiwan Association of Magnetic Technology, the Korean Magnetics Society and the Chinese Society of Magnetic Materials and Applications.
EDUCATION
UMAP head visits Tainan
University Mobility in Asia and the Pacific (UMAP) -secretary-general Lin Wen-tong (林文通) briefed National Cheng Kung University president Hwung Hwung-hweng (黃煌煇) on the outlook of his organization on Friday during a courtesy visit to Greater Tainan. Lin, who led a 28-member delegation on the visit, said Taiwan took over the position of the International Secretariat at the University Mobility in Asia and the Pacific beginning this year. “One of our goals is to maintain and renew the UMAP International Web site. Through this Web site, members of UMAP can learn about other participating schools and students can learn about the universities of their interests, especially in regard to credit transfer,” he said.
EDUCATION
Language a concern: poll
Nearly half of the nation’s university students worry they will have trouble communicating with Chinese students because of language differences, a survey found recently. Tamkang University admitted 78 Chinese students from 26 cities in China this semester and the university conducted the survey to learn about Taiwanese students’ impressions of their Chinese counterparts, as well as the latter’s experiences of living in Taiwan. Forty-five percent of Taiwanese respondents said they felt the linguistic differences would make communications difficult, and some of their Chinese counterparts felt the same way. One Chinese student from Fujian Province said language differences sometimes caused him problems in class, forcing him to think about the term “random access memory” whenever he heard it. Though there were concerns about the ability to communicate, the survey found that 62 percent of Taiwanese respondents described their Chinese counterparts as active participants. Eighteen percent of the Taiwanese students said the Chinese students got up early and lined up to wait for the library to open.
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