FOREIGN RELATIONS
Japanese group to visit
Japanese lawmaker Shinjiro Koizumi, who heads the largest faction within Japan’s ruling Liberal Democratic Party, is scheduled to arrive in Taiwan on Monday for a four-day visit, the Taipei-based Association of East Asian Relations said yesterday. Koizumi will be leading a delegation of 97, one of the largest to visit in the past decade, and is to visit the National Palace Museum and the 921 Earthquake Museum, the association said. The 32-year-old lawmaker, who was elected to Japan’s lower house in 2009, is the second son of former Japanese prime minister Junichiro Koizumi and has been the head of his party’s youth division since 2011. Shinjinro Koizumi, who played baseball in high school, and association head Lee Chia-chin (李嘉進) are also scheduled to attend a Chinese Professional Baseball League game on Tuesday in New Taipei City (新北市), where Koizumi is to throw the first pitch, the association said.
TOURISM
Indonesia attracts Taiwanese
Travelers from Taiwan are the fifth-largest group among foreign visitors attracted to Indonesia for value-for-money trips, according to credit card company Visa Inc. Indonesia is a top destination for budget-conscious tourists, said a survey released by Visa Worldwide Indonesia on Thursday, which also said that 5 percent of these visitors are from Taiwan. Malaysians accounted for the largest group — 22 percent — among the 12,631 foreign visitors surveyed between November and December by Visa, and travelers from Singapore and Australia followed closely at 21 percent and 20 percent respectively. Saudi Arabia placed fourth in the survey. Taiwanese also ranked among the top-10 nationalities visiting the Indonesian capital Jakarta and the country’s most popular tourist spot, Bali, according to local government statistics. Indonesia recorded 8.04 million foreign tourists last year, with Jakarta seeing 4,000 to 6,000 Taiwanese visitors per month, according to data from the Central Statistics Agency.
CULTURE
Ang Lee to head awards jury
Two-time Oscar-winning Taiwanese director Ang Lee (李安) is to head the jury on the 50th anniversary of the Golden Horse Awards, the most prestigious film awards in the Chinese-speaking world. The director will return to Taiwan for two weeks to review the nominated films, the Taipei Golden Horse Film Festival executive committee said. “I’m very honored to be invited to lead the jury at the 50th Golden Horse Awards,” Lee said in a statement. He pledged to do his best to coordinate the opinions of the judges and express his own views. The Golden Horse Awards Ceremony is scheduled for Nov. 23 in Taipei. Taiwanese heavyweight directors Hou Hsiao-hsien (侯孝賢) and Tsai Ming-liang (蔡明亮) and renowned Hong Kong director Johnnie To (杜琪鋒) will also play major roles at this year’s festival.
CULTURE
Berlin Philharmonic to visit
Fans of the world-renowned Berlin Philharmonic will once again be treated to an enthralling evening when the German orchestra performs in Taiwan in November on its third visit to the country. The Berlin Philharmonic, led by chief conductor Sir Simon Rattle of Britain, will give two concerts at the National Concert Hall in Taipei, on Nov. 8 and Nov. 9, according to the Management of New Arts (MNA), which is organizing the events. Taiwan will be the first leg of the orchestra’s Asian tour.
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