■ Society
Local youth nabs yo-yo crown
Lin Wei-liang (林韋良), a 16-year-old student from Taipei County's Yingge Vocational High School, recently won the Chinese yo-yo world championships, beating competitors from Japan, the UK, and the US. The victory came at a world acrobatics competition in Las Vegas, in the US. Lin wowed the crowd by using three bells in a row to play Chinese yo-yo, also known as "pulling bell" or che ling (扯鈴) in Mandarin. Not only is he a top Chinese yo-yo player globally, but he has a flexible body and can do the splits. Lin said that in order to be different from ordinary Chinese yo-yo players, he not only practices to strengthen his techniques, but also choreographs various movements by himself, and then incorporates them in his Chinese yo-yo choreography. He said that it was his creativity and diligence that have garnered him most of his acclaim. Lin yesterday firmly stated that he will not give up his pursuit of the art of Chinese yo-yo, and urged more people to try it. Tseng Wen-hsiu (曾文秀), Lin's coach, complained that the government do not take pulling bell seriously as a national sport. As a result, fewer and fewer people are willing to try Chinese yo-yo.
PHOTO: CHENG SHU-TING, TAIPEI TIMES
■ Foreign Affairs
The Gambia gets donation
Taiwan's ambassador to The Gambia presented a donation to fund the construction of two schools on behalf of the government on Thursday, a Gambian newspaper reported on Friday. Ambassador Patrick Chang (張北齊) yesterday presented a check for US$560,000 to the Gambian secretary of state for education, the English-language newspaper The Point said. The funds are intended for the construction of two senior secondary schools. When presenting the check, Chang said that President Yahya Jammeh has made a landmark in the development of education in The Gambia, the Point said. Chang added that the establishment of the University of The Gambia by Jammeh was the best investment a country can make, the paper reported. Gambian Secretary of Sate for Education Fatou Lamin Faye thanked the Taiwanese government for the gesture, adding that it has done a lot for the education sector, the paper said.
■ Society
Group builds homes
A Taiwan Buddhist group has built more than 4,000 houses for tsunami survivors in Indonesia and Sri Lanka, the group said yesterday. The Tzu Chi Foundation, a Buddhist charity, has built a Big Love Village for 3,700 families and five schools in Banda Aceh, Indonesia, and another Big Love Village for 649 families and a middle school in Hambantoba, Sri Lanka. Banda Aceh and Hambantoba are Indonesia and Sri Lanka's worst-hit areas in the Dec. 26 tsunami last year which killed more than 230,000 people in 12 countries. "Tsunami survivors in Banda Aceh will move into the Big Love Village, which is a housing complex, next Monday. The houses have furniture in them. Indonesian President Yodhoyono will visit the Big Love Village next Tuesday," the news release said. The Big Love Village in Hambantoba will be ready for use in the next few months. After the tsunami, the Tzu Chi Foundation rushed relief material and medical teams to the disaster areas.
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