■ Society
Book sale to help orphans
The Taipei American School's (TAS) Orphanage Club will hold its annual book sale tomorrow from 10am to 5pm in the lobby and forecourt of the school -- rain or shine. Club members have collected thousands of books, including bestsellers, biographies, art and travel literature, children's and English-teaching books. Scores of books in Chinese, Japanese and other languages are also available, as well as magazines, comic books and games. Money raised from the book sale will provide funding for orphans and other needy children in Taiwan and abroad. TAS is located at 800 Zhongshan N Rd, Sec. 6, in Tianmu (天母).
■ Event
Tibetan uprising march
Tibetans in Taiwan and their supporters announced yesterday that a march will be held tomorrow to commemorate the 48th anniversary of the 1959 Tibetan Uprising. After years of oppression, Tibet, which was invaded by China in 1950, rose up against the Chinese government on March 10, 1959. The uprising was met with violent military oppression by China, and the Tibetan government, led by the fourteenth Dalai Lama, went into exile. Members of the Tibetan government in exile will be present at the event tomorrow, where a statement from the Dalai Lama will be read. The march will begin at 10am in front of the Taipei City Council and is anticipated to end at 12 noon.
■ Health
Men don't brush as much
Men are lagging behind their female counterparts when it comes to oral hygiene, a survey of 22,087 men and women conducted by the Bureau of Health Promotion showed. More than 80 percent of women above the age of 12 brushed before going to bed, compared to less than 70 percent of the men surveyed. The survey found that women brushed their teeth on average twice a day, compared to men's 1.7 times a day. Women were also more likely to floss, with 49 percent using dental floss, compared to 40 percent of men. Both men and women were unlikely to visit the dentist for a check-up every six months, with only 14.3 percent of women and 12.8 percent of men doing so. However, 98.6 percent of women and 97.7 percent of men were likely to clean their teeth at least once a day.
■ Litigation
Court rules against Taipei
The Supreme Court on Wednesday ruled against the Taipei City Government's subway bureau, which had questioned the legal status of a French firm entangled in a legal battle with the city over the Mucha line of the mass rapid transit system. Yeh Chin-yuan, (葉慶元), director of the city's Law and Regulation Commission, refused to comment yesterday, saying he had not yet received the court ruling in writing. The city's Department of Rapid Transit Systems (DORTS) filed the request in August 2005 after losing a 12-year legal battle with French firm Matra in October 2005. The Supreme Court ordered DORTS to pay Matra NT$1.6 billion (US$48 million) for construction delays. DORTS questioned the legal status of the company, which disbanded in December 1995, after Matra filed for an injunction because the city refused to pay up. Taipei City Councilwoman Huang Shan-shan (黃珊珊) of the People First Party claimed that the last seven months of litigation had cost NT$300 million.
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