Suzanne Lawrence, a special adviser for children’s issues at the US Department of State’s Bureau of Consular Affairs, is in Taipei to attend the first Taiwan-US meeting on issues related to child protection, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs said yesterday.
The American Institute in Taiwan and the Taipei Economic and Cultural Representative Office in the US last month signed a memorandum of understanding on Cooperation on International Parental Child Abduction and appointed representatives from the bureau and the Ministry of Health and Welfare to form a committee to tackle cross-border parenting cases, the foreign ministry said.
During her three-day visit, which began on Wednesday, Lawrence visited government agencies and child welfare groups, it said.
Photo courtesy of the American Institute in Taiwan
Lawrence and Minister of Health and Welfare Chen Shih-chung (陳時中) are to hold a news conference after today’s meeting.
Separately, the foreign affairs ministry has invited a Japanese delegation representing start-ups and Internet-related businesses to visit from today to Tuesday, Department of International Cooperation and Economic Affairs Director-General Phoebe Yeh (葉非比) said.
The 16-person delegation is to visit Computex Taipei and start-up incubators, such as the Social Innovation Lab, the Taiwan Tech Arena, the Start-up Terrace and the Taiwan Startup Stadium, Yeh said.
On June 14 and 15, the foreign ministry is to take foreign representatives to visit agricultural technology operations in Taipei, including automated mushroom cultivation, moth orchid variety improvement and chicken farming, she said.
It is one of the two tours for foreign representatives every year that the foreign ministry organizes to showcase key Taiwanese businesses, she said.
To mitigate the effect of the US-China trade dispute on local businesses, the foreign affairs ministry has boosted efforts to explore markets in Africa and Latin America, she said.
It has set up a group to inspect commercial opportunities in southern Africa and identified several areas for collaboration, including agriculture, production of organic fertilizers, vehicle components and other export trades, she said.
It would also continue market evaluations in Guatemala, El Salvador, Honduras, Saint Lucia, Saint Vincent and the Grenadines and Saint Kitts and Nevis that began last year, Yeh 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