■ CULTURE
Tung Bloom Festival opens
The annual Hakka Tung Blossom Festival will be held simultaneously in six counties this month. As the Tung Blossom mostly grows near Hakka villages, the flower has become the symbol of Hakka culture. The festival will be held in Taipei, Taoyuan, Hsinchu, Miaoli, Taichung, Nantou and Changhua counties. Sanyi (三義), Miaoli County, is home to the largest Tung Blossom forests and the Miaoli County Government has organized several package tours of the area. To accommodate visitors to Sanyi, the Westlake Resort has arranged a series of events scheduled to begin on Saturday, featuring the comic book character Old Master Q (老夫子). More information can be obtained at www.hakka.gov.tw.
■ POLITICS
DPP berates grand justices
The Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) yesterday said that the Council of Grand Justices had neglected its duty as a constitutional interpretation of the Referendum Law (公投法), filed by DPP caucus in January 2004, had yet to be delivered. DPP Secretary-General Lin Chia-lung (林佳龍) said during a press conference that the caucus had applied for an interpretation of the manner in which the Cabinet's Referendum Review Committee was organized, but that "no progress had been made over the past three years and three months." The Referendum Law says that the committee members be recommended by each political party according to legislative representation.
■ ENVIRONMENT
Earth Day activity announced
As part of International Earth Day, DPP Legislator Tien Chiu-chin (田秋菫) and a group of environmentalists yesterday called for participation in an activity encouraging people to turn off lights, air-conditioners and other home appliances from 12pm to 1pm tomorrow. "While the Sydney Opera House will carry out a similar effort on Thursday [today] at 7:30pm, the government and the private sector in Taiwan will do as much on Friday," she said. Tien said the activity was intended to address global warming, using as an example the crisis facing Tuvalu, where the rising sea level threatens to destroy the entire country. She claimed the Taipei Basin could one day face a similar fate if the sea level were to rise by 6m. "For every 10,000 kilowatts Taiwan consumes, about 6.2kg of carbon dioxide will be emitted," Tien said.
■ HEALTH
Meningitis at peak season
The Department of Health warned yesterday that epidemic cerebrospinal meningitis has entered peak season with 17 observed cases to date. Eleven of these case have developed into the full-blown disease and two people have died. Lin Ting (林頂), deputy director of the Center for Disease Control, said the early symptoms of this form of meningitis, which is caused by a bacterium, could be missed, adding that the public should pay attention to such symptoms as fever and skin rashes. Treatment with antibiotics and other drugs is usually effective if treated in the initial stage, he added. Lin said that among the 11 confirmed cases this year, three involved babies not yet a month old, with the remaining eight patients aged between 11 and 86. Reported cases jhave been sporadic rather than clustered, Lin said. He advised the public to stay away from crowded places such as military barracks or school dormitories and to pay attention to personal hygiene. People should also get vaccinated if they travel to Africa or other regions with high infection rates, 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
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