CROSS-STRAIT
Wu leaves for China trip
Former Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) chairman Wu Poh-hsiung (吳伯雄) left for China yesterday to meet Chinese President Hu Jintao (胡錦濤). Prior to his departure at Taiwan Taoyuan International Airport, Wu said that since the re-election of President Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九) in January, China had expressed the hope that senior KMT officials could continue to meet their Chinese counterparts and discuss promoting cross-strait peace. Wu will meet Hu today, their fifth meeting since 2008, as well as other high-ranking Chinese officials, local media reports said. Wu will also represent Ma, the KMT’s chairman, in paying respects to party founder Sun Yat-sen (孫逸仙) at his mausoleum in Nanjing. He will travel to Henan Province tomorrow, where he will attend a series of activities in honor of the Chinese deity Huangdi (黃帝), the reports added.
CRIME
More funds recovered
A total of US$15.1 million has been recovered from a “diplomatic broker” who embezzled funds intended for the establishment of ties with Papua New Guinea in 2006, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs said yesterday. The funds — US$2.2 million — were returned to the government earlier this month, ministry spokesman James Chang (章計平) said. The ministry is still trying to retrieve another US$14.7 million in overseas property and cash from Wu Shih-tsai (吳思才) and his accomplice, Ching Chi-ju (金紀玖), a Taiwanese national who holds a US passport, Chang said. Wu, who is serving time in jail on breach of trust charges, embezzled US$29.8 million in government funds with Ching, who is still at large. They were commissioned by then-foreign minister James Huang (黃志芳) to facilitate a deal to set up ties with Papua New Guinea, high court judges 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