■ ENTERTAINMENT
Taiwanese win film awards
The nation took five awards at the 40th Worldfest-Houston International Film Festival, Taiwan's representative office in Houston said over the weekend. The winning films included Amour-Legende by director Wu Mi-sen (吳米森); Visions of Taiwan's Mountains and Digitized Operations in Taiwan, both of which are documentaries made by the Government Information Office, and Kuanwu Formosan Salamander and Taipei MRT by director Chen Chin-fa. Amour-Legende is a story about a young man who suffers from memory loss and begins to question his own existence after going on a journey. The film was shown at last year's Taipei Golden Horse Film Festival and won the Global Vision Award at the 31st Hong Kong International Film Festival. Chen's Kuanwu Formosan Salamander deals with an endangered species of amphibian.
■ HEALTH
Aflatoxins found in peanuts
Twelve out of 14 samples of crushed peanuts tested by Taipei City Government's Department of Health tested positive for aflatoxins, a potent carcinogen produced by many species of Aspergillus fungus. The sample with the highest level of aflatoxin contained 81.2 parts per billion (ppb), more than five times the legal limit of 15ppb. Of the 12, five samples exceeded the legal limit. The tainted products will be recalled and their producers fined between NT$30,000 to NT$150,000.
■ EDUCATION
Scholarships touted in US
The Taipei City Government is offering scholarships for US citizens who live in Taipei's sister cities to learn Chinese in Taiwan, Taiwan's representative office in Washington said in a news release on Sunday. The scholarships, NT$25,000 (US$750) per student, are part of Taipei City's efforts to expand international exchanges, the Taipei Economic and Cultural Representative Office in Washington said in a press release. A total of 10 applicants from 12 of Taipei City's sister cities in the US will be awarded scholarships. The 12 cities are Houston, Marshall (Texas), Dallas, Phoenix, Los Angeles, San Francisco, Atlanta, Oklahoma City, Boston, Cleveland, Indianapolis and Guam. The US students who receive the scholarships will take classes from September this year to next February at National Taiwan University, National Taiwan Normal University or National Chengchi University. For more information, visit www.edunet.taipei.gov.tw/public/ReadNews. Registration closes on May 22.
■ ENVIRONMENT
Conserve coral week begins
A series of activities designed to call attention to the need for coral reef conservation began yesterday at Kenting National Park in Pingtung County. The Coral Reef Biodiversity and Conservation Week activities coincide with the spawning season for coral off the southern coast, said the Kenting National Park Administration, which is organizing the event along with the Taiwanese Coral Reef Society, the Academia Sinica Research Center for Biodiversity, the Underwater Photography Association and the National Museum of Marine Biology and Aquarium. The Kenting coral spawning season usually begins on the second Sunday of the third month of the lunar calendar. The seven-day event will include a series of seminars on the sustainable management of coral reefs, beach and coastal water cleaning activities and a free concert on the Maobitou coast on Saturday.
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