WEATHER
Powerful monsoon coming
Meteorological conditions over the Indian and Pacific oceans are likely to produce a powerful monsoon that might hit Taiwan as early as Wednesday nest week and bring a tremendous amount of rain, the Central Weather Bureau (CWB) said. However, as well as resolving the nation’s drought crisis, the torrential rain could also cause flooding, Weather Forecast Center senior specialist Fred Tsai (蔡甫甸) said. Beginning on Wednesday, heavy downpours and thundershowers are expected to hit central, northern and northeastern Taiwan, according to CWB forecasts. In the past, persistent and heavy monsoon rains have caused severe flooding and landslides.
FOREIGN AID
Taiwan to donate rice
Taiwan is to donate 16,670 tonnes of white rice to 17 nations in Asia, Africa, Latin America and the Pacific this year, the Agriculture and Food Agency said on Thursday. The rice is to be shipped by the end of next month and the delivery of the donations are to be managed by the World Taiwanese Chambers of Commerce, the World League for Freedom and Democracy ROC Chapter, Noordhoff Craniofacial Foundation, Buddhist Compassion Relief Tzu Chi Foundation and Ministry of Foreign Affairs, the agency said. The rice is intended to help feed refugees and poor people in Bangladesh, Cambodia, Indonesia, Jordan, Pakistan and the Philippines in Asia; Lesotho, Mozambique, South Africa, Swaziland and Zimbabwe in Africa; the Dominican Republic, Haiti, Honduras, Nicaragua and El Salvador in Latin America; and Tuvalu in the South Pacific, it added. Under the aid program, which started in 2002, Taiwan has donated more than 270,000 tonnes of white rice to people in 33 countries, the agency said.
TRADE
US’ Rivkin to visit
US Assistant Secretary of State for Economic and Business Affairs Charles Rivkin on Thursday said that he plans to visit Taiwan at the end of this month to discuss economic issues. He told reporters after the hearing that Taiwan is an “extremely important business partner” for the US and that his visit to Taiwan is a “symbolic step.” Rivkin leads the US Department of State’s Bureau of Economic and Business Affairs, which is responsible for managing trade negotiations, investment treaties, economic sanctions, transportation affairs, telecommunications policy and intellectual property rights protection. His visit visit to Taiwan is scheduled to follow those by Bureau of Economic and Business Affairs principal deputy assistant secretary Kurt Tong and senior US APEC official Robert Wang.
AVIATION
Airport has explosives scare
Ground crew at the Taiwan Taoyuan International Airport yesterday found a crate marked “explosives inside” when unloading the luggage for flight CX-450 from Hong Kong to Japan, but it proved to be a false alarm. The flight was on a stop-over to Japan when ground crew noticed a piece of paper on one of the containers that read: “Beware, explosives inside,” according to the airport. The police and fire department sealed off the area after being alerted by the airport and called for demolition experts’ help. The container was moved to airstrip 802 before experts conducted further investigations, the police said, adding that there were no signs of explosives. Preliminary investigations found it was a false alarm, with the Aviation Police Bureau saying it would investigate who had put the sticker on the container.
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