■ Culture
Pingsi to host Shaolin center
The country's first Shaolin cultural center and kungfu school is scheduled to be constructed in Taipei County's Pingsi Township (平溪), Tzou Yung-hsiang (鄒永祥), the founder of the Shaolin Development Corp, said at a press conference yesterday. Tzou said the corporation decided to change the site from Taoyuan County's Tasi Township (大溪) to Pingsi as the latter offers 168 hectares of land compared with the former, which has only 2 hectares available. The site is in the mountains north of the Pingsi railway station. With an estimated total investment of NT$5 billion, construction of the center is expected to be completed in 2012. Tzou said that the idea of building the center, the 18th Shaolin ritual place in the 1,512 years of Shaolin kungfu's history, is to fulfill the hope expressed by Shaolin Abbot Shih Yongxin during a 2004 visit to Taiwan. Shih will visit Taiwan again in July to introduce Shaolin kungfu.
■ Health
MOI to fund facility
The Ministry of the Interior announced yesterday it would give the Bethesda Assisted Care Facility in Hualien NT$8.26 million (US$251,000) to help the home for the disabled construct a new facility and provide it with computers, phones and other equipment. Bethesda applied to the Cabinet for government assistance last November after discovering it lacked the funds to build a new assisted-care facility, a ministry press release said. The project is compatible with the ministry's social welfare policy, which seeks to provide assistance to private organizations devoted to taking care of the underprivileged, it said. Bethesda provides assisted-care services to the mentally and physically challenged, according to its Web site. The ministry encouraged similar social welfare organizations to apply to the government for financial assistance.
■ Oil
CPC cuts LPG prices
CPC Corp, Taiwan (台灣中油) announced yesterday it will lower the prices of liquefied petroleum gas (LPG) to reflect the declining costs of energy, effective midnight tonight. The company said it will cut the price of household LPG by NT$0.3 per kg, or 1.4 percent, to NT$21.11. That will lower the price of a 20kg household gas cylinder by NT$6, CPC said on its Web site. CPC will also reduce the price of LPG for cars by NT$0.3 per liter to NT$16.6, or 1.78 percent, it added.
■ Crime
Fake nun unveiled
Police have arrested a fake Buddhist nun who was suspected of stealing money from temples, a newspaper said yesterday. The woman, surnamed Hsu, started masquerading as a Buddhist nun last September to make it easier to steal, the Chinese-language United Daily News said. Since then, she has stayed at many Buddhist temples in Kaohsiung County and allegedly stolen cash and valuables from the temples. Hsu, 46, had also hitchhiked and made off with valuables from the cars. On Friday, patrol police in Kaohsiung County saw Hsu begging for alms but found her actions suspicious. When they checked her cloth bag, which is part of the Buddhist attire, they found a stack of fake banknotes and a condom. Hsu claimed she was carrying the fake money and the condom for a Buddhist prayer meeting. Under police questioning, Hsu admitted she was the "fake nun" whom police had been hunting.
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