DIPLOMACY
Japan donation announced
Representative to Japan Frank Hsieh (謝長廷) donated NT$840,000 to Japanese disaster relief funding on behalf of the government, Ministry of Foreign Affairs spokeswoman Joanne Ou (歐江安) said yesterday. Torrential rain in Japan has caused more than 100 deaths, with many more missing, on Kyushu island, as well as Gifu and Nagano prefectures. The donation was accepted by Japan-Taiwan Exchange Association Chief Representative Hiroyasu Izumi. President Tsai Ing-wen (蔡英文) sent a message to the Japanese government via Twitter in Mandarin and Japanese, Ou said. Minister of Foreign Affairs Joseph Wu (吳釗燮) and Taiwan-Japan Relations Association President Chiou I-jen (邱義仁) also conveyed their best wishes to their Japanese counterparts, she said. Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe wrote a response to Tsai on Twitter, thanking her and saying of Taiwan: “A friend in need is a friend indeed.” Taiwan hopes to work with Japan on disaster prevention and mitigation, Ou said. Ou said that questions about donations to China, which faces huge agricultural losses after flooding there, should be directed to the Mainland Affairs Office.
POLITICS
KMT events announced
Events to promote the Chinese Nationalist Party’s (KMT) foreign diplomacy are aimed at drawing people interested in participating in public affairs and channels to express the KMT’s ideas, it said yesterday. The events would help the KMT promote party-to-party diplomacy internationally and build on existing efforts to reach out to foreign media, international non-government organizations and international affairs academics, it said. The KMT in May announced that it was re-establishing its International Affairs Division, in line with KMT Chairman Johnny Chiang’s (江啟臣) move to boost the party’s global connectedness. The KMT yesterday announced that the division would be headed by associate professor of international affairs and strategic studies Li Da-jung (李大中), with Fang Tien-sze (方天賜), a professor in National Tsing Hua University’s Graduate Institute of Sociology, and National Policy Foundation member Ho Chih-yung (何志勇) as deputy directors.
TRANSPORTATION
MRT to trial food service
Taipei Rapid Transit Corp has announced a collaboration with food and beverage chains to launch a “food express” service for MRT commuters in the capital. Many people who ride the MRT still have to line up to buy dinner after taking a train home and its MRT Food Express would save them time, the company said. The service would remove the tedium of waiting in line for dinner after a long day of work and allow commuters to collect, at one spot, orders from separate restaurants, it said. Only Zhongshan Station, which serves the Tamsui-Xinyi (Red) and Songshan-Xindian (Green) lines, and Nanjing Fuxing Station, which serves the Wenhu (Brown) and Green lines, would offer Food Express during a trial period and would only provide dinner options, the company said. People using the food service must preorder, the company said, adding that it would consider expanding the service, and collaborators, based on the results of the trial. People would be able to place orders through a mobile app before 4pm and collect their orders from 6pm to 7pm at a stall next to their designated station’s customer service stand, the company said. Commuters would have to exit the ticket gates to collect their food, even if they are only transiting, the company said.
Staff writer, with CNA
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