ECONOMY
Boao Forum quiet about Wu
Boao Forum for Asia organizers yesterday declined to confirm whether vice president-elect Wu Den-yih (吳敦義) had registered to attend the economic conference in April. The only confirmed applicant is Fredrick Chien (錢復), a retired diplomat who headed Taipei’s delegation to the forum last year in his capacity as top adviser to the Cross-Straits Common Market Foundation, the organizers said. Wu registered last week to attend the forum in his capacity as an adviser to the foundation. The forum organizers declined to say how many people have registered. Sources said Chinese Vice Premier Li Keqiang (李克強), widely tipped to become Chinese premier in a leadership transition later this year, could attend the Boao Forum, and arrangements could be made for Wu and Li to meet.
DIPLOMACY
Closer ties needed: ARATS
In the face of gloomy prospects for the global economy, Taiwan and China should cooperate more closely, Association for Relations Across the Taiwan Straits (ARATS) Executive Vice Chairman Zheng Lizhong (鄭立中) said yesterday. Zheng made the remarks in Greater Tainan, while visiting local farms and farmers’ associations. Agricultural exchanges are important, Zheng said, adding that he planned to find ways to enhance cooperation between the sides by meeting with locals in southern townships during his trip. Zheng arrived in Greater Kaohsiung on Saturday and visited Pingtung before arriving in Tainan. While meeting milkfish breeders in Tainan’s Syuejia District (學甲) on Monday night, Zheng said China would continue importing fish from about 100 local breeders, who supplied China with 1,800 tonnes of milkfish last year.
CULTURE
French to honor comics
A French comics officially festival announced that for the first time it will establish an award for Taiwanese comics this year. Serge Ripoll, chairman of the Chambery Comics Festival, confirmed the new award after announcing at last year’s festival that the award would be created to attract Taiwanese artists on a regular basis. Under the competition rules, comics published between Jan. 1 last year and April 30 will be eligible. If a work by a Taiwanese artists was not been published in French, they can still be eligible by adding a brief introduction in French.
SOCIETY
Restaurant proposals down
Fewer men have chosen to drop down to one knee and pop “the question” at hotel restaurants on Valentine’s Day this year, a number of five-star hotels in Taipei reported yesterday. Only two men were scheduled for marriage proposals yesterday at the Grand Hyatt, compared with four successful proposals recorded last year, the hotel’s Taipei branch reported. The Regent Hotel reported only one scheduled marriage proposal last night, while not a single marriage proposal was scheduled at the Palais de Chine Hotel. Meanwhile, motels across the country were reporting high accommodation rates. The 168 Hotel Group said many of its hotels reported that at least 20 rooms had been booked in the morning, in contrast to about two rooms during the off season. The Hotel Holiday Garden in Greater Kaohsiung recorded a Valentine’s Day occupancy rate two times higher than usual. In addition, Google Taiwan reported a 70 percent hike last week in searches related to friends and companions.
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