■ Culture
AWC activity ends today
The Association of World Citizens (AWC) will wrap up its "love and peace endorsement" activity in front of the Taichung railway station today. The Taiwan branch of the AWC, a non-governmental organization, started the activity on April 1 and has obtained in excess of 60,000 signatures. The group has invited an Indian folk dance troupe currently in central Taiwan to perform traditional Indian dances in an effort to attract more people on the activity's final day.
■ Environment
Green expo closes in Ilan
The 2004 Ilan Green Exposition at Wulaokeng, a scenic area in Suao township of Ilan County closed its doors yesterday after attracting around 400,000 visitors. Ilan County Commissioner Liu Shou-cheng (劉守成) said the expo highlighted content and quality, focusing on education and environmental protection, which set it apart from other floral expos in the country. Liu said the expo received acclaim for all eight of its theme halls featuring flowers, ferns, frogs, turtles, mildew, ethnic foods, glass and displays on the environment and ecology through solar energy and wind power. The expo was the fifth consecutive show of its kind to be sponsored by the Ilan County Government, Liu said.
■ Transportation
Taipei-Chengdu route opens
Air Macau inaugurated a route between Taipei and Chengdu, China, via Macau on Saturday, providing the first Taipei-Chengdu flight that does not require passengers to transfer between aircraft during the Macau stopover, according to a company spokesman. Air Macau uses the 178-seat Airbus 321 plane on the five-hour flight, the spokesman said, adding that the carrier will ply the route on a twice weekly basis, increasing to four flights per week during the July-October peak period. The new route is aimed at Taiwanese businesspeople who have to travel frequently between Taiwan and China. Chengdu is a major investment destination for Taiwanese businesspeople exploring new horizons in southwest China.
■ Labor
Thais celebrate Songkran
Nearly 10,000 foreign workers took part in a traditional Thai Songkran festival in Taoyuan yesterday. During Songkran, Thai people splash water on one another to symbolize washing away the misfortunes of the past year and ushering in the new year. Yesterday's event included performances of Thai music and dance, as well as stalls selling Thai food. Singers Jonas from the Netherlands and Christy from Sweden, who are well-known in Thailand because they have lived there for a long time, sang traditional Thai folk songs and greeted the participants in Thai. A Songkran beauty contest and transvestite competition, which were very popular in past years, were scrapped this year, but the event still attracted many curious Taiwanese and foreign workers.
■ Tourism
Top hotels upgrade TVs
Five-star hotels are enhancing in-room entertainment by replacing conventional TVs with plasma-display-panel (PDP) TVs or thin-film-transistor liquid-crystal-display (TFT-LCD) TVs, hoteliers said yesterday. The Hotel Evergreen Laurel Hotel in Taipei was the first to place 42 top-notch PDP TVs in some of its rooms, followed by the Westin Taipei.
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