DIPLOMACY
Chopin Web site updated
The designation of Taiwan on the International Chopin Piano Competition’s Web site has been changed to “Chinese Taipei,” after the government protested the use of two other names, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs said yesterday. When the contestants for the preliminary round were named last week, the country of the Taiwanese was first listed as “PRC Taiwan” before being changed to “China Taiwan.” After the Taipei Representative Office in Poland lodged a protest, the appellation was changed on Saturday to “Chinese Taipei,” ministry spokeswoman Joanne Ou (歐江安) said. Although the designation is still not what the government would prefer, it is “acceptable,” Ou said. She thanked the competition’s organizers for their efforts to resolve the matter, despite pressure from Beijing.
EARTHQUAKES
Tainan rocked by temblor
A magnitude 4.2 earthquake hit southern Taiwan at 9:52am yesterday, but no damage or injuries were immediately reported. The epicenter was in Tainan’s Nanhua District (南化), and the quake hit at a depth of 13.2km, the Central Weather Bureau’s Seismology Center said. The quake’s highest intensity, which gauges the actual effect of a temblor, measured 4 on Taiwan’s zero to 7 intensity scale in Nansi and 3 in Kaohsiung and Chiayi County. It had an intensity of 2 in Chiayi City and Yunlin County.
DIPLOMACY
UN Woman criticized
The Presidential Office on Friday criticized the UN Entity for Gender Equality and the Empowerment of Women for not including President Tsai Ing-wen (蔡英文) in the “Women in Politics: 2020” map it produced with the Inter-Parliamentary Union. The map, released on Tuesday, also shows Taiwan in the same color as China, suggesting that they are one nation. “Hello @UN_Women: If you really want to empower women around the world, you may need 2 things: 1) NEW GLASSES so you can see past your prejudices; 2) MORE COURAGE so you can face reality & acknowledge #Taiwan’s widely admired head of state, President @iingwen!” the office tweeted. The office also posted a map showing Taiwan as one of 21 nations that have a female as head of state or government leader. The Ministry of Foreign Affairs said it has asked the Taipei Economic and Cultural Office in New York to file a protest with the UN over Tsai’s exclusion.
EDUCATION
Gold medalists honored
The Ministry of Education on Friday presented awards to the gold medalists of last year’s International Exhibition for Young Inventors. Taiwanese won nine of the 33 gold medals that were awarded at the exhibition in Indonesia in October, the ministry said. They included students from Kaohsiung, Tainan, Taipei, Taichung, New Taipei City and Yilan County, whose projects were chosen from out of 140 submitted. Last year’s event drew participants, aged six to 19 from 11 nations, who competed in seven categories: disaster management; education and recreation; foods and agriculture; green technologies; safety and health; technologies for special needs; and art technology. The K-12 Education Administration said that by recognizing the medalists, it hopes to encourage students to continue to invent and to innovate, and to inspire others to be passionate about technology and invention.
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