■ 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.
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