■ Weather
Another typhoon building
A tropical low pressure system near the Philippines is expected to become a typhoon within the next 24 hours, and its outer rim could start to affect Taiwan from Saturday at the earliest, the Central Weather Bureau (CWB) reported yesterday. The tropical storm system will be named Typhoon Khanun if it continues to strengthen in force to become the 15th typhoon in the Pacific this year, CWB meteorologists said. They forecast normal hot summer weather for today and tomorrow, adding that rainy weather is expected from Saturday, particularly over northern and northeastern parts of the country, as the storm system moves closer.
■ Carnival
Hunt still on for top noodles
Taipei is holding its first beef noodle festival to select the city's top 30 beef noodle restaurants and encourage people to eat more beef noodles. Since the Taipei Beef Noodle Festival kicked off on Aug. 14, 140,000 Taiwanese have browsed the festival's Web site and nearly 20,000 have cast a vote for their favorite beef noodle shop, the organizer said on yesterday. "Comments keep pouring in as many people are still combing Taipei's alleys to find the best beef noodle shop," an official from the Taipei City Government told reporters. The Taipei Beef Noodle Festival ends on Sept. 24 with a Beef Noodle Carnival. There will be no prize for the top 30 restaurants, but they will be invited to set up stalls at a Taipei square to serve a bowl of hot beef noodles to participants.
■ DIPLOMACY
Paal gets poor review
A recent performance review of Douglas Paal, director of the American Institute in Taiwan (AIT), was fairly negative, a Chinese-language daily reported yesterday. Although Paal had conveyed US policies to Taiwan's government and officials, according to the US State Department review he was unable to provide the US government with a thorough understanding of Taiwan's current situation, the newspaper said. The review said that under Paal, differing opinions were not heard by top officials, causing morale at AIT to decline, the daily said. According to the review, Paal is seen as stubborn and unwilling to listen to differing opinions. The newspaper said the evaluation was conducted by the State Department last month through questionnaires and interviews. The daily, citing an unnamed State Department source, said that the evaluation was largely negative. The newspaper said that its source speculated that Paal may be replaced sooner than planned because of the evaluation.
■ Hurricane Katrina
DOH sends medical aid
The Department of Health (DOH) is preparing to speed batches of medical supplies to the US to help Hurricane Katrina victims in three southern states, a spokesman for the Executive Yuan said yesterday. Cho Jung-tai (卓榮泰) quoted DOH Minister Hou Sheng-mou (侯勝茂) as saying during a regular Executive Yuan meeting that the DOH is preparing a shipment that will be enough for 10,000 patients for three months. Hou said that US officials have acknowledged the DOH action and have decided to accept the materials, Cho said. He said the DOH has also offered to dispatch doctors and nurses to help with medical relief work in flood-ravaged areas. However, he said, the US has said that only medical professionals who are US certified will be accepted. The DOH is recruiting personnel and will send the team as soon as it is assembled, he said.
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