DIPLOMACY
Chen to travel to Honduras
Vice President Chen Chien-jen (陳建仁) is to attend the inauguration of re-elected Honduran President Juan Orlando Hernandez this month, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs said yesterday. Spokesman Andrew Lee (李憲章) told a news conference that Chen is to represent President Tsai Ing-wen (蔡英文) at the Jan. 27 ceremony. The ministry is planning Chen’s visit to Central America and is to reveal more details when the time is right, he said. Hernandez was declared the winner of last year’s election on Dec. 17, amid ongoing allegations of electoral fraud. On Wednesday last week, Tsai congratulated Hernandez on his re-election via a video conference call, making her one of the first world leaders to extend her congratulations to him.
FOREIGN AFFAIRS
Turkey eyes Taipei mosque
The Turkish government is interested in making a donation for the construction of a third mosque in Taipei, Taipei Mayor Ko Wen-je (柯文哲) said yesterday. Ko is to visit Turkey in a few weeks to discuss the project. Ko told a news conference that Turkey has expressed an interest in building a mosque in the city that would potentially be worth millions of US dollars. The mayor is to travel to the Netherlands, Belgium, Poland and Turkey from Jan. 27 to Feb. 6 to learn more about urban renewal, the circular economy, “smart” cities and shared transportation in major cities around the world. Another focus of the trip is to discuss funding for the mosque project, Ko said.
TRANSPORTATION
Crane falls on power lines
A truck-mounted crane collapsed early yesterday morning at Taichung’s Houli Station, causing a power outage that affected 2,650 passengers, the Taiwan Railways Administration said. The crane collapsed and fell onto power lines, disrupting the electricity supply and train services, the agency said. The damaged crane was removed from the site at 5:15am and rail services returned to normal at 8:11am, it said. During the service disruption, eight shuttle buses were used to transport about 500 passengers between Miaoli County’s Sanyi Township (三義) and Taichung’s Fongyuan District (豐原), as well as Taichung’s Houli District (后里) and Fengyuan. Passengers affected by the delay are eligible for compensation if they experienced a delay of more than 45 minutes, including a full refund.
SOCIETY
Foreign student found dead
A Malaysian student at Da-Yeh University in Changhua County was on Wednesday night found dead outside the men’s dormitory dressed in a Spider-Man costume. He is believed to have fallen from the fifth floor of the building. A passerby found the student, surnamed Lee (李), lying unconscious on the ground and notified the university and police, officials said. Lee was dead when officers reached the scene, they said. Police suspect that Lee was on the balcony taking selfies when he fell, given that they found his cellphone on a fifth-floor balcony. One of Lee’s classmates told police that Lee had said he was going to take photographs. Police are unable to definitively determine the cause of Lee’s death because there were no witnesses, Changhua County Police Department Yuanlin (員林) Precinct investigation unit head Chan Ting-yu (詹廷育) said. The university has contacted Lee’s family in Malaysia and is to arrange for them to travel to Taiwan, it 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