■ Culture
Hakka festival to open
The "Elegant Meinung" festival opens on Oct. 26 with a ceremony in front of Meinung's old township office, including performances and parades staged by local Hakka groups. The festival will be held until Nov. 16, and will close with a second ceremony at the Meinung Hakka Historic Museum. Various exhibitions, films and cuisine fairs will also be staged. Free bus tours of Meinung and surrounds will also be available Saturday and Sunday during this period. A bicycle tour also starts at 3pm on Nov. 9 and a Hakka rock'n'roll show starts at 3pm on Nov. 15. The museum will also hold several Hakka-related performances and exhibitions. For further details visit the Kaohsiung County Bureau of Cultural Affairs Web site (http://163.29.243.4/web/eng/en11_01.asp#30).
■ Crime
Murders rise slightly
The number of murders in Taiwan rose slightly last year, according to the Directorate-General of Budget, Accounting and Statistics, with arguments still the leading catalyst for homicide. The Cabinet agency said 1,156 people were murdered last year, up 84 from the previous year. It said arguments were behind 36 percent of the killings, followed by revenge (15.2 percent) and impulse (12.3 percent). Eight percent of the convicted murderers were teenagers, 1.1 percentage point higher than the previous year. Of the victims, 23 percent were women. According to the survey, more than 33 percent of the murders were committed between 7pm and midnight, nearly 17 percent between midnight and 3am and about 15 percent between noon and 5pm.
■ Business
Singapore company sued
A company in Singapore is being sued for illegally selling copies of the hit TV drama Meteor Garden II. Spin Video was accused of hawking illegal VCDs of the show starring the popular boy band F4, taped off the air in Taiwan, The Straits Times said. The sole licensee of the program in Singapore, Alliance Entertainment Singapore, alleged in court on Monday that Spin Video offered hundreds of VCDs of the show even after a court injunction was obtained in January ordering it to stop selling them. The plaintiff's lawyer said police raids netted more than 800 sets of VCDs. Spin Video denied any copyright infringement. The firm said it imported genuine products from a Malaysian company with the knowledge of the copyright owners and exclusive licensee. One of the companies suing Spin Video is Speedy Video distributors, which has a license from Taiwanese distributor, Catalyst Logic, to distribute the film in Malaysia and Singapore.
■ Sport
Fans protest ticket system
Two baseball fans yesterday said ticket sales for the Chinese Professional Baseball League's 2003 Taiwan Series had been interfered with by privileged baseball fans. Scores of fans were left ticketless despite having waited more than 30 hours for the box office to open on Saturday. Accompanied by Democratic Progressive Party Legislator Tsai Chi-fang (蔡啟芳), the two fans accused the teams and authorities of colluding with prominent businesspeople in hiding tickets to give to their cronies, to the detriment of less-well-connected spectators. Tsai condemned the bad management of the ticketing office and the influence of the businesspeople.
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