DIPLOMACY
Feng not on ‘farewell trip’
Minister of National Defense Feng Shih-kuan’s (馮世寬) overseas trip is diplomatic and not a “farewell trip,” the ministry said in a statement on Sunday. Feng left on Wednesday last week on a 17-day tour of Central America and the Caribbean to boost ties with the nation’s diplomatic allies. However, a report by the Chinese-language Apple Daily called it Feng’s “farewell trip” because past defense ministers had only undertaken such foreign visits shortly before retiring. The speculation was unfounded, the ministry said, adding that Feng had received invitations from the Nicaraguan army’s commanding general Julio Cesar Aviles Castillo and Guatemalan Minister of Defense Williams Mansilla Fernandez. Aside from Nicaragua and Guatemala, Feng is visiting Honduras, El Salvador and the Dominican Republic.
HEALTH
Universiade staff fall ill
A Taipei restaurant was closed for two days after members of the Taipei Universiade staff who ate lunchboxes from the establishment had diarrhea. The restaurant failed a hygiene and sanitation inspection, and was found to use trash cans without lids and leave ingredients on the ground, said Wang Ming-li (王明理), chief of the Taipei Department of Health’s Food and Drug Division. The kitchen staff did not wear sanitary caps when preparing food and ventilation fans used in the dining space were not clean, she added. On Thursday, employees of the Taipei Tennis Center in Neihu District (內湖) ordered 302 lunchboxes from the restaurant, and 22 fell ill after eating. The operator was ordered to cease operations on Friday and Saturday, Wang said. Food samples were taken from the restaurant for further analysis and the results are to be released on Friday, she added.
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