UNITED STATES
Senators support Tsai
US senators Robert Menendez and James Inhofe, who cochair the US Senate Taiwan Caucus, on Tuesday sent joint letters to Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and Canadian Minister of National Defence Harjit Sajjan to express their support for awarding a prize to President Tsai Ing-wen (蔡英文) at the Washington-based Halifax International Security Forum (HFX). Their support comes after Politico reported that the Canadian government allegedly warned the forum’s organizers that it would withdraw funding if they award Tsai the John McCain Prize for Leadership in Public Service during the forum’s annual summit in November. Pressed by Canadian lawmakers to comment on the matter, Trudeau on April 14 said that the Canadian “government has supported and provided funding to the Halifax Security Forum throughout our time in office, and the minister has participated every year and will continue to” do so.
INVOICE LOTTERY
Cloud receipts incentivized
The Ministry of Finance on Thursday said it would increase the number of prizes awarded to cloud receipt holders in the uniform invoice lottery for March and last month. The ministry aims to encourage people to ask for digital receipts instead of paper ones, Minister of Finance Su Jain-rong (蘇建榮) said. In the draw, to be held on May 25, the number of NT$500 prizes awarded to cloud receipt holders would be increased to 1 million from 600,000 in previous draws, Su said. As of the end of March, cloud receipts accounted for 38.4 percent of all electronic receipts, Su said, adding that the ministry aims to increase the share to 40 percent by the end of this year. The ministry would also introduce a new NT$800 prize in the draw for July and August exclusively for cloud invoice holders, Su said.
CZECH REPUBLIC
Senate backs WHO bid
The Czech Senate on Wednesday voted 58 to zero to approve a resolution supporting Taiwan’s participation in all meetings, mechanisms and activities of the WHO. The bill urged the Czech government to express its support for Taiwan’s bid to participate in the WHO and highlighted the successful cooperation with Taiwan in fighting the COVID-19 pandemic. Czech Senate President Milos Vystrcil, who visited Taiwan in August last year despite a warning from Beijing, shared the result of the vote on Twitter on Thursday. In Taipei, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs thanked the senate for approving the resolution, saying it was another sign of support from the Czech legislature.
INDONESIA
Maskless pranksters fined
A US-based Taiwanese YouTuber and a Russian influencer were yesterday ordered off the Indonesian island of Bali after recording themselves defying mandatory mask-wearing. Clips of the video posted two weeks ago by Josh Paler Lin (林啟晨) and a Russian friend show the two duping supermarket guards with a painted mask. Lin’s YouTube channel specializes in prank videos. Although first-time offenders against Bali’s mask-wearing rule face a fine of 1 million rupiah (US$69) for foreigners and deportation after a second offense, Indonesian police said they wanted them removed from the island immediately. The pair had shown remorse and apologized in an Instagram video posted by Lin. “I made this video to entertain people because I’m a content creator and it’s my job to entertain people,” Lin said. “However, I did not realize that what I did could actually bring a lot of negative comments.”
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