■ Weather
Plum rains to start
Though the temperature reached 37.9 degrees Celsius at Taitung County's Ta Wu Mountain (大武山) yesterday, the annual plum rain season is expected to begin in Taiwan today. The Central Weather Bureau (CWB) said yesterday the chance of rain was high islandwide in the coming week. The chance of showers or scattered rain in northern Taiwan is 80 percent, and 60 percent in central Taiwan. Mountainous areas in southern Taiwan will see torrential rain, the CWB said.
■ Traffic
Tour bus crash kills four
A road accident in Miaoli County left four passengers dead and several other injured. A tour bus with 29 passengers, all staff members of Kaohsiung's Hsiung Ling Construction Company (雄菱工程公司), was on a tour in Miaoli. The bus reportedly fell into a valley near Miaoli's Shishan Farm (獅山農場) yesterday at around 5:20pm. Rescuers managed to get 27 people out of the bus, while two passengers were still stuck in the wreckage as of press time last night.
■ China relations
New Party China-bound
New Party Chairman Yok Mu-ming (郁慕明) said yesterday that the party will also dispatch a delegation to visit China following Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) Chairman Lien Chan's (連戰) ongoing China visit and People First Party Chairman James Soong's (宋楚瑜) upcoming trip on May 5. According to Yok, the New Party's planned trip will take place either this month or next. Yok and his daughter Yok Cheng-yi (郁正儀) appeared in Shanghai's Shangri-la Hotel yesterday to receive Lien.
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