DIPLOMACY
Abe aide to raise food issues
Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe has asked a close aide to discuss the safety of Japanese food with Taiwanese officials when the latter visits Taipei on Wednesday, the Yomiuri Shimbun reported yesterday. The newspaper said Abe met with his special adviser, Koichi Hagiuda, on Friday and asked him to brief Taiwan on the safety of Japanese food. Abe said Taiwan stepped up its restrictions on imported Japanese foodstuffs because of a misunderstanding, and he hoped the strict rules would not affect good bilateral relations. After the meltdown of the Fukushima Dai-ichi nuclear power plant in the wake of an earthquake on March 11, 2011, Taiwan banned foods from several nuclear-affected Japanese prefectures. The restrictions were tightened earlier this year after food items from those prefectures were discovered to have entered Taiwanese supermarkets because of fake labeling. The government has passed new regulations requiring that certain teas, baby foods, dairy products and marine products from some areas of Japan must have radiation inspection certificates in order to be imported into Taiwan. The new measure takes effect on May 15.
SOCIETY
UK to host expo pavilion
The British Trade and Cultural Office will host a pavilion at the Creative Expo in Taipei to showcase UK fashion and also seek to boost bilateral business links. The UK pavilion will present works by three Taiwanese designers who have established their own brands in the UK after studying there — Chen Shao-yen (陳劭彥), Apu Jan (詹朴) and Liu Mei-hui (劉美惠) — as well as jewelry and shoes of two British brands, Tatty Devine and Natacha Marro London, the trade office said. The Creative Expo will run from Wednesday to May 4 at Taipei Expo Park, Huashan 1914 Creative Park and Songshan Cultural and Creative Park. Works by designers from Taiwan, Hong Kong, Japan, Thailand, China, Singapore and Malaysia are to be highlighted at the event, the expo organizers said.
ATHLETICS
Cheerleaders win gold
A Taiwanese team on Thursday won a gold medal at the 2015 World Cheerleading Championships in Florida, the first by a Taiwanese group in a major international cheerleading tournament. The team of about 20 young men and women won the Coed Premier event of the championships at the Walt Disney World Resort in Orlando, beating teams from the US, Finland and seven other countries. Taiwanese teams also finished seventh in the Freestyle Pom Doubles event, 12th in the Hip Hop Doubles event, 11th in the Team Cheer Freestyle Pom event and ninth in the Team Cheer Hip Hop event. The Chinese Taipei Cheerleading Association said Taiwan has participated in the Coed Premier event for the past five years.
DIPLOMACY
Slovakia inks science pact
Taiwan and Slovakia have signed a new agreement aimed at furthering cooperation in science and technology, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs said. The signing was completed on Wednesday and the agreement took effect immediately, the ministry said in a statement. Following a 1996 agreement on cooperation in science, the new agreement will help advance bilateral cooperation in science and technology through expanding exchanges between research institutes and universities on both sides and establishing a platform for technological cooperation, the ministry 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