■ Culture
Pingtung gets giant penis
A group of sculptors has carved an 8.5m long wooden penis, hoping to set the world record for the longest sculpture of the male genital, a local TV station reported yesterday. Eight sculptors in Pingtung spent half a year carving the wooden penis. Now their 10.8 tonne artwork is on display at an amusement park in Pingtung, the report said. The sculptors' plan to apply to the Guinness Book of World Records to have their creation officially declared the longest in the world, the report said. "The Asian certification center for the Guinness World Records said the Guinness World Records have a category for wooden sculptures, but the Guinness World Records Museum in London could reject the application if it considers the sculpture immoral," Huang Chih-ying, from the Guinness World Records Asian certification center in Taichung said.
■ Health
Hospitals set holiday hours
Taipei's larger medical centers reminded the public yesterday that they will be closed from Tuesday through Thursday next week for the Lunar New Year holiday. Although the emergency room will still see patients, most hospitals will only open for half day on Feb. 11 and 12. Not until Feb. 14 will most hospitals resume their daily operation. The National Taiwan University Hospital and Taipei Veterans General Hospital will be closed Tuesday through Thursday and offer partial inpatient services on Friday and Saturday. Tri-Service General Hospital said it would be open on the morning of Feb. 12. Cathay General Hospital, Catholic Cardinal Tien Hospital, and Shinkong Wu Ho-su Memorial Hospital said they will only be closed half day on Tuesday and will remain open the rest of the week.
■ Government
Sunshine policy in south
Kaohsiung Mayor Chen Chi-mai (陳其邁) said yesterday that his administration will follow a sunshine policy. Chen made the remark in his first administrative meeting since assuming post as acting mayor on Tuesday. Chen said that sunshine stands for "health and transparency," adding that all administrative work, policy-making and promotions in the future will be made apparent, in line with this policy. Chen held the meeting at a fisherman's wharf at Kaohsiung Harbor to signify his determination to build the port city into an "ocean capital."
■ Cross-strait Ties
Killer gets death sentence
A Chinese man has been sentenced to death for killing a Taiwanese businessman, the man's 5-year-old son and two other people during a failed robbery, a newspaper reported yesterday. Xiong Xudong attacked Hsu Man-li in Guangdong Province last November after being discovered breaking into Hsu's home, the Beijing Evening News reported. The report said the verdict had been handed down by the Intermediate People's Court in Dongwu on Thursday. Death sentences in China are automatically appealed but rarely overturned.
■ Education
NTU inks cooperative pact
National Taiwan University (NTU) signed a cooperative agreement yesterday in Taipei with the National University of Mongolia (NUM) as part of its efforts to help promote academic exchanges and cooperation between the two countries. The agreement was signed by NTU President Chen Wei-chao (陳維昭) and his counterpart, Tserensodom Gantsog.
An essay competition jointly organized by a local writing society and a publisher affiliated with the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) might have contravened the Act Governing Relations Between the People of the Taiwan Area and the Mainland Area (臺灣地區與大陸地區人民關係條例), the Mainland Affairs Council (MAC) said on Thursday. “In this case, the partner organization is clearly an agency under the CCP’s Fujian Provincial Committee,” MAC Deputy Minister and spokesperson Liang Wen-chieh (梁文傑) said at a news briefing in Taipei. “It also involves bringing Taiwanese students to China with all-expenses-paid arrangements to attend award ceremonies and camps,” Liang said. Those two “characteristics” are typically sufficient
A magnitude 5.9 earthquake that struck about 33km off the coast of Hualien City was the "main shock" in a series of quakes in the area, with aftershocks expected over the next three days, the Central Weather Administration (CWA) said yesterday. Prior to the magnitude 5.9 quake shaking most of Taiwan at 6:53pm yesterday, six other earthquakes stronger than a magnitude of 4, starting with a magnitude 5.5 quake at 6:09pm, occurred in the area. CWA Seismological Center Director Wu Chien-fu (吳健富) confirmed that the quakes were all part of the same series and that the magnitude 5.5 temblor was
The brilliant blue waters, thick foliage and bucolic atmosphere on this seemingly idyllic archipelago deep in the Pacific Ocean belie the key role it now plays in a titanic geopolitical struggle. Palau is again on the front line as China, and the US and its allies prepare their forces in an intensifying contest for control over the Asia-Pacific region. The democratic nation of just 17,000 people hosts US-controlled airstrips and soon-to-be-completed radar installations that the US military describes as “critical” to monitoring vast swathes of water and airspace. It is also a key piece of the second island chain, a string of
The Central Weather Administration has issued a heat alert for southeastern Taiwan, warning of temperatures as high as 36°C today, while alerting some coastal areas of strong winds later in the day. Kaohsiung’s Neimen District (內門) and Pingtung County’s Neipu Township (內埔) are under an orange heat alert, which warns of temperatures as high as 36°C for three consecutive days, the CWA said, citing southwest winds. The heat would also extend to Tainan’s Nansi (楠西) and Yujing (玉井) districts, as well as Pingtung’s Gaoshu (高樹), Yanpu (鹽埔) and Majia (瑪家) townships, it said, forecasting highs of up to 36°C in those areas
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