DIPLOMACY
Event to say thank you
Videos of the powerful March 11 earthquake and devastating tsunami in Japan, as well as footage of Taiwan’s post-disaster help, are scheduled to be shown at an event in Taipei next month as a thank you gesture to the country, the Japanese event organizers said. The event is to show clips of former Japanese prime minister Shinzo Abe and the chiefs of Iwate, Miyagi and Fukushima prefectures — the three areas hardest hit by the magnitude 9 earthquake — to express gratitude to Taiwan, according to the Japan and Taiwan Culture Art Exchange Association. “We are very grateful and touched by Taiwan’s generous donations and help,” the association’s president Tony Tanaka said. The event is scheduled to take place at the Sun Yat-sen Memorial Hall on Dec. 2. A total of 3,500 free tickets will be available for the event.
JUSTICE
Extradition efforts continue
Taiwan is continuing its efforts to sign an extradition agreement with the US, although several complicated issues have yet to be resolved, a government official told lawmakers yesterday. “Negotiations with the US on the issue are ongoing,” Vice Minister of Foreign Affairs Shen Ssu-tsun (沈斯淳) said, adding that signing such an agreement remains one of the government’s top priorities. However, it would take time to resolve the complicated issues resulting from the countries’ differing legal systems, Shen told the legislature’s Foreign Affairs and National Defense Committee. Shen’s remarks came in response to questions by several legislators concerned about the progress on inking an agreement with the US to strengthen bilateral cooperation on fighting crime.
DIPLOMACY
Hong Kong official chosen
James Chu (朱曦), director-general of the Department of Hong Kong and Macao Affairs under the Mainland Affairs Council (MAC), has been designated as the country’s new representative to Hong Kong, sources said yesterday. The position, currently held by Jeff Yang (楊家駿), is officially known as director of the Taipei Economic and Cultural Office in Hong Kong, or the MAC’s Bureau of Hong Kong Affairs. Chu’s appointment has been approved by the Executive Yuan and is expected to be announced soon, MAC sources said, who spoke on condition of anonymity. Meanwhile, Yang will head the council’s Department of Policy Planning, replacing Wu Mei-hung (吳美紅), who will become chief of the council’s Department of Legal Affairs, the sources said. Formerly known as the Chung Hwa Travel Service, Taiwan’s representative office in Hong Kong was upgraded to the level of a quasi-official agency on July 15 and renamed the Taipei Economic and Cultural Office.
DIPLOMACY
Volunteers teach Mandarin
Six volunteers from Taiwan’s International Cooperation and Development Fund (ICDF) arrived in El Salvador on a two-year mission on Saturday, according to a statement released by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs yesterday. In response to the global interest in learning Mandarin, the fund launched a language program in 2008 and has been sending volunteers to El Salvador since then. This year, one of the volunteers will be involved with setting up a music program for the first time. The organization hopes that through language and art, Salvadorans may get to understand Taiwan better. Taiwan’s embassy in San Salvador has also been actively promoting Mandarin study programs.
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