■ Religion
Tooth to get new home
One of Taiwan's largest Buddhist organizations broke ground in Kaohsiung County yesterday on a huge museum to house a relic believed to be one of the Buddha's teeth. Thousands of Buddhist faithful prayed and prostrated themselves to the strains of solemn music as the relic, protected in a golden case, was brought in a sedan chair to the venue of the planned museum next to the Fokuangshan Monastery. Master Hsing Yun (星雲), the abbot of Fokuangshan Monastery, presided over the ceremony attended by dozens of politicians. The museum complex will occupy 50 hectares with the main building standing some 130m tall. A center square will have capacity for up to 100,000 people, the monastery said. The museum is set to open within three years.
■ Arts and culture
Awards face budget cut
The country may have to cancel the 40-year-old Golden Horse Award film festival this year, officials said yesterday. The legislature has passed the second reading of a motion brought by 13 TSU legislators to cut the NT$15 million budget for the festival to be held later this year. The third and the final reading of the motion is expected to be passed soon. Angered by the organizer's refusal to allow President Chen Shui-bian (陳水扁) to speak during the award ceremony last year, the TSU sought to have the entire budget axed, despite an explanation for the move by Wang Ying-hsiang (王曉祥), chairman of the Taiwan Movies Industry Foundation. "We were just following the previous practice of not inviting political leaders to speak on the stage as the event is designed for movie business people," Wang said.
■ Justice
Court to rule on retrial
The nation's high court is to rule today in a retrial of three young men who have spent 12 years in jail for allegedly killing a couple. The families of the three, Su Chien-ho (蘇建和), Chuang Lin-hsun (莊林勳) and Liu Bin-lang (劉秉郎), continued to maintain their sons' innocence while awaiting the ruling that human rights groups have said will be the standard against which the nation's progress in human rights will be measured. The three were convicted and sentenced to death but have continued to protest their innocence, insisting they had been forced into confessing by police. The case of the Hsichih Trio, named after the city where the crime took place, has been controversial from the beginning. On March 24, 1991, a husband and wife were murdered at their home. The three suspects were soon implicated by another man who was subsequently executed for the crime. Human rights groups charge no physical evidence has ever linked the three to the murder.
■ Labor
CLA looks to limit foreigners
The Council of Labor Affairs (CLA) plans to ban wealthy families from employing foreign caretakers and offer subsidies to families that are willing to hire local housemaids or caretakers, a senior official said yesterday. CLA Chairwoman Chen Chu (陳菊) made the remark at a panel session of a two-day seminar on administrative reform organized by the DPP. Many participants at the seminar urged the government to curtail the employment of foreign laborers in an effort to lower the unemployment rate, Chu said. Taiwan brought in 6,000 foreign laborers in 1992 and the number of legal alien workers now stands at 317,000. Chen said a complete ban would be difficult as local workers have little interest in working in certain fields.
Agencies
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