WEATHER
Catch New Year’s sunrise
The earliest sunrise in the nation on Jan. 1 would occur at 6:33am at Dongqing Village (東清部落) on Orchid Island (Lanyu, 蘭嶼), off the southeast coast of Taiwan, the Central Weather Bureau said yesterday. Sunrise on Taiwan proper would first be seen a few minutes later at 6:35am at Oluanpi (鵝鑾鼻) in Pingtung County, the bureau said. Meanwhile, the last sunset of this year would occur at 6:12pm on Thursday next week on Itu Aba Island (Taiping Island, 太平島) in the South China Sea. On Taiwan proper, the last sunset of the year would be seen at about 5:25pm in Tainan’s Anping District (安平), Kaohsiung’s Cijin District (旗津) and Pingtung County’s Guanshan area (關山), it added. The bureau said that the forecasts are based on average atmospheric conditions, and the weather situation on New Year’s Eve and New Year’s Day could affect viewing.
WEATHER
Snow falls on Yushan
Snow fell on Yushan (玉山), Taiwan’s highest peak, yesterday as seasonal northeasterly winds brought abundant moisture to the country, the Central Weather Bureau said. Temperatures on Yushan dropped to minus-3.1°C yesterday morning, and snow began to fall at 8:20am, it said. It was the first snow in Taiwan this winter. The bureau said that the weather would warm up slightly starting today, although occasional showers would persist for a few days due to a passing tropical depression forming north of the Philippines. The depression, which would not affect Taiwan directly, is moving west toward Vietnam. From Thursday through Sunday, a wave of northeasterly winds would bring drier weather throughout much of Taiwan, the bureau said.
DIPLOMACY
Name-change effort verified
Deputy Minister of Foreign Affairs Harry Tseng (曾厚仁) yesterday confirmed that Taiwan is pushing for the Taipei Economic and Cultural Representative Office in Washington to be renamed to the “Taiwan Representative Office.” Tseng was speaking at a meeting of the legislature’s Foreign Affairs and National Defense Committee when Democratic Progressive Party Legislator Lo Chih-cheng (羅致政) asked him about a letter sent to US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo on Thursday last week by 78 US representatives urging their government to allow the change. At the time, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs said that enhancing Taiwan-US relations was a long-term goal, and that it would continue to fight for the nation’s best interests. Lo yesterday asked if the ministry’s response indicated support for the change, to which Tseng responded by saying that “cases in progress are sensitive.” Lo followed up by asking whether the name change was in progress, to which Tseng replied: “Yes.”
DIPLOMACY
Su visits Eswatini offices
Premier Su Tseng-chang (蘇貞昌) yesterday visited the Embassy of the Kingdom of Eswatini in Taipei to express his condolences on the passing of Eswatini prime minister Ambrose Dlamini. Dlamini died in hospital in South Africa on Dec. 13 at the age of 52. President Tsai Ing-wen (蔡英文) offered her condolences the following day. The Eswatini government did not disclose the cause of death, but said he had tested positive for COVID-19 four weeks earlier. The Ministry of Foreign Affairs said in a news statement that Su “also asked Eswatini Ambassador to Taiwan Thamie Dlamini to convey the government’s appreciation to his country for the late prime minister’s staunch support of Taiwan’s efforts to participate in international organizations.”
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