DIPLOMACY
Women’s project backed
Taiwan would support a US project called the 2X Women’s Initiative, which is aimed at tackling economic challenges faced by women in developing countries, Representative to the US Hsiao Bi-khim (蕭美琴) said in Washington on Thursday. “Taiwan will support training programs under the 2X initiative, which seeks to advance women’s economic empowerment and nurture the full potential of women as contributors to equitable growth and sustainable development in their communities,” Hsiao said in a release on the Web site of the Taipei Economic and Cultural Representative Office in the US. In a release on the same day, the US International Development Finance Corp said that it welcomed Taiwan’s sponsorship of a new US$350,000 partnership to support women’s entrepreneurship and advance gender-smart investments in developing countries. The 2X Women’s Initiative, part of the White House’s Women’s Global Development and Prosperity Initiative, is run by the corporation, a US federal government development bank that partners with the private sector to finance solutions to major challenges in developing countries.
DIPLOMACY
Milos Vystrcil outlines visit
Czech Senate President Milos Vystrcil on Thursday said that he would lead a delegation to Taiwan this month to promote stronger economic and technological cooperation between the two countries. The leader of the upper house of the Czech parliament said that common values such as freedom, democracy and national sovereignty would be on his agenda when he speaks with Taiwanese politicians. The two countries have followed a similar path in their transition to democracy and he is pleased to “finally get a chance to see the people of Taiwan, who I think have achieved a great success,” Vystrcil said. The delegation is to leave Prague on Aug. 29 on a chartered flight for Taipei, where Vystrcil, business leaders, scientists and other members of the Czech Senate would stay until Sept. 4.
FOOD
Health permit rules unveiled
Food items that have not received health food permits would not be allowed to be billed as “healthy” or a “health food” from July 1, 2022, to avoid confusion, the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) said on Tuesday. In a revised directive about food labels, the FDA said that items without a permit would not be allowed to use the word “healthy” in their names to avoid misleading people into believing that they are certified health food products. Food Safety Division head Lee Wan-chen (李婉媜) said that the FDA took the measure after many people asked about a rising number of food items that are promoted as healthy, but do not bear the FDA’s health food label.
CRIME
Drug arrests increase
Police in Taipei arrested more people on charges related to drug dealing in the first half of this year than in the same period last year, the Taipei City Police Department’s Criminal Investigation Division said on Monday. From January to June 458 people were arrested in Taipei on such charges, up by 67, or 17.14 percent, from a year earlier, police official Sun Fu-tso (孫福佐) said. The increase was not surprising, considering that the number of cases per year has been on the rise, from 758 in 2017 to 832 in 2018 and 894 last year. Dealers often use delivery services to facilitate drug trades, police said, adding that delivery workers had reported suspicious packages they were asked to deliver.
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