DIPLOMACY
Macau, HK offices open soon
Taiwan’s offices in Macau and Hong Kong will begin operations next month and in March respectively, the Mainland Affairs Council said yesterday. This follows the opening of the Macau Economic and Cultural Office and the Hong Kong Economic, Trade and Cultural Office in Taipei on Dec. 2 and Dec. 19, respectively. The quasi-official representative offices will facilitate economic, cultural, educational, tourism and medical exchanges between Taiwan and the two Chinese territories, the council said. They will also provide overseas emergency assistance to Hong Kong and Macau residents in Taiwan and help Taiwanese with affairs related to travel to the two regions, the council said. John Leung (梁志仁) will assume the post as the new director of the Hong Kong office, while Nadia Leong (梁潔芝), secretary-general of Macau’s Tourism Development Committee, will head the Macau office.
CROSS-STRAIT TIES
Taiwanese pavilion opens
A pavilion dedicated to the sales of Taiwanese fruits, vegetables and marine products in a popular Shanghai shopping mall began operating yesterday, the Council of Agriculture said. Nearly 300 agricultural products are being sold on the ground floor of the Sun Moon Light Central Square, said Chang Shu-hsien (張淑賢), director-general of the council’s Department of International Affairs. The pavilion is operated by Greater Tainan-based Uni-President Dream Parks Corp under the council’s guidance, Chang said. As the mall is near the popular tourist attraction of Tianzifang, a block of alleyways that retains the look of old Shanghai, it is a good venue to showcase Taiwan’s high-quality fresh produce to as many people as possible, Chang said.
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