■ Society
Kids copy politicians
Punch-ups between lawmakers in the Legislative Yuan had such an impact on one group of school children that the students staged mock fights in a local council, local news channels reported yesterday. Pupils at the Ilan Elementary School were invited to play the roles of county officials in a mock county council session, the new channel said. Seizing their opportunity, some students re-enacted what they had seen on television and stormed the podium while others imitated scuffles between members of the legislature.
■ Geology
Quake shakes Taitung
An earthquake measuring 4.9 on the Richter scale rocked Taiwan yesterday, seismologists said, but there were no immediate reports of damage or casualties. The tremor hit at 7:07pm with an epicenter 18.7km northeast of the southeastern Taitung city and originating 25.2km under the ground, according to the Seismology Center. A quake with a magnitude of 6.6 jolted the nation on Dec. 10 -- the most powerful one to have hit last year -- but caused only minor injuries and damage in some southern cities.
■ Travel
Security measures unveiled
In line with tougher security requirements on board flights bound for the US, Taiwan has begun training air security agents, according to Civil Aeronautics Administration (CAA) Director-General Chang Kuo-cheng (張國政). Although Taiwan's US-bound flights remain normal and the US has not demanded that Taiwan deploy armed air marshals on board those airplanes, Chang said that the CAA had already launched a program to train such personnel on the grounds that it will be a prevailing trend in the future. The CAA has arranged airport police officers to undergo such training, as the US demands that security agents on board US-bound airplanes must also be public servants, Chang said. He added that members of a government anti-terrorist task force and those of a special security ad hoc group would be recruited into the program. The CAA also plans to invite foreign experts to give lessons and help train workers at Taiwan-based aviation companies, he said.
■ Travel
Travel agents cross Strait
A group of travel agents from the frontline island of Kinmen sailed across the Taiwan Strait to Xiamen in China yesterday where the group will head to northeastern China to promote two-way tourism between Kinmen and that region. The 36-member group from the Kinmen Tourism Development Association will fly from Xiamen to Harbin, Jilin Province, to embark on a week-long tourism promotion mission, which will also take the group to other northeastern Chinese cities, including Changchun, Shenyang and Dalien, said Peng Huo-hsing (彭火興), vice chairman of the association, before the group's departure. According to Peng, in the past three years since the government had initiated the three small links program, tourists from Kinmen had visited most of the major cities and scenic attractions in southern China, but northeastern China remains "virgin land" for Kinmen tourists. The group was aiming at gaining further understanding of tourism resources in northeastern China during the inspection tour, Peng said. At the same time, he added, the group will also tap into the northeastern Chinese tourism market, finding out how Kinmen can attract new tourists from northeastern China for sightseeing or leisure trips.
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