DIPLOMACY
Tsai open to China dialogue
President Tsai Ing-wen (蔡英文) yesterday reiterated that Taiwan is willing to engage in communications with China, but would only do so on an equal footing with no political conditions attached. Tsai made the remarks at a meeting at the Presidential Office with a visiting European Parliament delegation led by Frank Engel of Luxembourg. She thanked the members of the European Parliament (MEP) for their long-term support of Taiwan, saying the government was especially grateful when several pro-Taiwan MEPs showed up at a rally held by Taiwanese expatriates and officials in Belgium to protest Chinese bullying and suppression. About 250 Taiwanese expats, students and officials from Taiwan’s diplomatic allies posted to the EU, Belgian parliamentarians and EU lawmakers took part in the event late last month.
AGRICULTURE
Thai platform establishedThe Taipei Economic and Cultural Office in Thailand, together with the Council of Agriculture, has set up an online platform to host Taiwan-Thailand agricultural exchanges, the office said yesterday. The platform was created to promote exchanges of business links and opportunities between the two governments and academia, the office said in a press release. The two nations have had long-term cooperation and exchanges in agriculture since the 1970s, it added. Taiwan offers high-tech agricultural development technology and experience, while Thailand has vast fertile land, creating unlimited business opportunities for agricultural cooperation, the statement said.
HEALTH
Kinmen officially FMD-free
Kinmen County has been officially recognized by the World Organization for Animal Health (OIE) as foot-and-mouth disease (FMD)-free with the use of vaccines, the Council of Agriculture said on Monday. Taiwan proper, Penghu and Matsu received the “FMD-free with vaccination” designation by the OIE last year, the council said. The OIE recognizes two FMD-free categories, one with and one without the use of vaccination, and the government is now seeking to achieve the status of FMD-free without vaccination, the council said. Since July 1, authorities in Taiwan, Penghu and Matsu have been encouraging farmers to raise hogs without vaccines and to obtain animal health certificates prior to selling their products, it said.
SOCIETY
NTU academic dead at 86
Yang Kuo-shu (楊國樞), professor emeritus of psychology at National Taiwan University (NTU), died early yesterday at the age of 86, the university’s psychology department said. Yang passed away peacefully in his sleep at the NTU Hospital’s Bei-Hu Branch, the department said on its Facebook page. Yang had taught at the university since 1959 and had served twice as the director of the psychology department, during which he contributed greatly to the development of social psychology in Taiwan and across Asia, NTU said. An NTU alumnus from the department of psychology, Yang was also a research fellow at the Institute of Ethnology at Academia Sinica and a former president of the Asian Association of Social
Psychology. Yang devoted his career to promoting the development of indigenous psychology in Asia, and had contributed to numerous books and journals.
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