ENERGY
Taiwan on exemption list
Taiwan is one of seven countries that will be exempt from economic sanctions for importing Iranian oil, US Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton announced on Monday. In a statement released by the US Department of State, Clinton said India, Malaysia, South Korea, South Africa, Sri Lanka, Turkey and Taiwan would be exempted because of their significant reduction of oil imports from Iran. The seven join 11 other countries, including Japan and some EU nations, that were put on the exemption list in March. US President Barack Obama signed a bill at the end of last year to expand US sanctions against Iran, covering its central bank and financial sectors, a move that allows penalties on foreign banks that settle oil imports with the Iranian central bank. However, the law exempts firms from countries that significantly reduce their crude imports from Iran. Oil imports from Iran are estimated to account for only 4 percent of Taiwan’s total oil imports. Officials have not revealed the amount of Taiwan’s reduction.
DIPLOMACY
Ministers go to APEC talks
Three ministers will attend a series of APEC ministerial level meetings in Russia this month, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs said yesterday. The ministers will share their views on energy security, women’s business opportunities and health financing with their counterparts in St Petersburg, Lily Hsu (徐儷文), head of the Department of International Organizations, said at a routine press conference.
SOCIETY
Abusive dog catchers fired
A contractor hired by state-run Taiwan Port Co to catch stray dogs at Kaohsiung Port has been fired because of animal abuse, a port official said on Monday. It was reported that the contractor’s employees had mistreated a dog while catching strays at the port earlier this month. The dog died two days later. In response to a public outcry over the incident, the port said it had rescinded the contract on Wednesday last week after an investigation into the animal’s death. The Greater Kaohsiung City Government’s Animal Protection Office would take over the task of catching strays at the harbor, said Chang Chan-jung (張展榮), head of the labor safety division at Kaohsiung Port. The contractor could face a fine of between NT$15,000 and NT$75,000 under the Animal Protection Act (動物保護法), Animal Protection Office deputy director Chu Chia-te (朱家德) said.
EDUCATION
US group awards academic
A prestigious US organization granted an award to a Taiwanese researcher from Academia Sinica, the country’s highest academic institution, for contributions he made to transdisciplinary education and research. Ovid Tzeng (曾志朗), a former minister of education, was named the recipient of this year’s Academy Gold Medal of Honor, which was awarded by the non-profit organization Academy of Transdisciplinary Learning and Advanced Studies (TheATLAS). The annual award “recognizes unusual accomplishment in transdisciplinary education and research, public service and other allied pursuits beneficial to design and process science,” TheATLAS Web site says. Tzeng accepted the award at TheATLAS 2012 Biennial Meeting at Asia University in Greater Taichung, which started on Tuesday last week. TheATLAS was founded in 2000 to promote transdisciplinary education and research.
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