DIPLOMACY
EU programs boost ties
Two programs prepared by Taiwan’s Representative Office in the EU and Belgium for EU officials to learn Mandarin and study Taiwan have helped establish a Taiwan-EU platform for dialogue and have assisted the EU in cultivating experts on Asian affairs, the office said. This year, 24 EU officials were enrolled in the Mandarin program and the Taiwan program, both of which will take them to Taiwan in the summer to attend lectures and seminars on Mandarin and Taiwan’s politics, economic development, culture and food, the office said. The Mandarin program, in which participants attend a two-week language and culture course, began in 2007, while the one-week Taiwan program was first launched in 2008. So far, a total of 143 officials have enrolled in either the Mandarin program or the Taiwan program, said Hsu Hui-wen (徐會文), head of the culture affairs division of the Taiwan liaison office in the EU.
EDUCATION
Taiwan wins Informatics gold
Taiwan has won one gold and two bronze medals at the 25th International Olympiad in Informatics, held from July 6 to Friday in Brisbane, Australia. Taipei Municipal Jianguo High School student Huang Kai-chi (黃凱祺) won the gold medal, while Huang’s schoolmates, Chen Li (陳立) and Huang Hsin-yuan (黃信元), won the bronze medals. They were honored at the award presentation and closing ceremony of the annual competition on Friday. This year’s International Olympiad in Informatics was attended by 290 secondary school students from more than 80 countries. Next year, the event will be held in Taipei. The Taiwanese delegation said Huang Kai-chi is a prodigy in mathematics and physics. He previously won a gold medal at last year’s International Physics Olympiad in Estonia. The delegation is scheduled to return to Taiwan on Thursday.
DIPLOMACY
Delegation to visit Japan
Legislative Speaker Wang Jin-pyng (王金平) is scheduled to lead a delegation of 14 legislators from across party lines on a visit to Japan from July 21 to July 25. During the trip, the delegation will visit Tokyo and Iwate Prefecture on Honshu Island, which was hit by a magnitude 8.9 earthquake in March 11, 2011, Wang said, adding that he had previously visited residents of Fukushima and Miyagi prefectures, which were also affected by the quake. Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) Legislator Lee Hung-chun (李鴻鈞), who heads a Taiwan-Japan parliamentary friendship group, said the Red Cross Society of the Republic of China has made good use of money donated by Taiwan’s general public for post-quake reconstruction work in Fukushima, Miyagi and Iwate prefectures. The delegation also plans to tour Japan’s nuclear power facilities, meet with Japanese officials in charge of disaster prevention and meet with Japanese lawmakers in the run-up to Japanese Senate elections scheduled for July 21, Lee said.
DIPLOMACY
Immigration MOU signed
South American diplomatic ally Paraguay has signed a memorandum of understanding (MOU) with Taiwan on immigration and collaboration in fighting human trafficking yesterday, the National Immigration Agency said. The MOU was signed by National Immigration Agency Director-General Hsieh Li-kung (謝立功) on June 24 in Taipei and was forwarded to Taiwan’s embassy in Paraguay, the agency 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
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