■ WEATHER
Cold front arrives
Cooler temperatures are expected nationwide this week as the first cold front of the fall arrives today, the Central Weather Bureau said yesterday. The bureau forecast cloudy and rainy skies in the north, northeast and east of the country. Afternoon showers are likely in the west, central Taiwan and in the south. The front is likely to affect the weather for two-to-three days. Temperatures are forecast to peak today at 32?C in the north, 33?C in central Taiwan, 33?C in the south and 32?C in the east.
■ SOCIETY
Woman killed in accident
A car was struck by a metal object of unknown origin on Saturday while traveling south on the Sun Yat-sen Freeway, causing the immediate death of a female passenger, freeway patrol officers said. A Taipei resident surnamed Tsai, 49, was driving his wife, surnamed Wang, 44, back to Taipei from Keelung on a section of the freeway linking Hsichih and Neihu (內湖) in Taipei City when the object penetrated the windshield on the passenger side of the vehicle, officers said. A shaken Tsai said the incident had occurred very suddenly and he did not know where the metal object came from. He said he saw the object roll over the engine hood, smash through the windshield and strike his wife in the head. Police said the curved chunk of metal, measuring 40cm-by-20cm-by-3cm, appeared to be a brake drum.
■ TOURISM
Youths promote Taiwan
Ninety-three youngsters who received tourism promotion certificates from the National Youth Commission (NYC) have joined various volunteer services to help boost youth tourism in Taiwan, a NYC spokesman said yesterday. The volunteers were recruited earlier this year and divided into different groups -- youth travel news reporters, computer volunteers, international tourism ambassadors, international travel volunteers, travel promoters on campuses, and Japanese and Korean language interpreters. The youths participated in two training camps and seven professional training sessions, the spokesman said. Following training, the youths participated in a series of promotional activities, beginning in June, to boost the awareness of Taiwan among young international travelers, the spokesman said.
■ EDUCATION
MOE to spend on storage
The Ministry of Education has implemented a four-year plan to provide NT$50 million (US$1.5 million) annually, starting next year, for the installation or repair of storage cabinets at junior high and elementary schools. Pan Wen-chung (潘文忠), director of the ministry's Elementary Education Department, said that in order to reduce the weight of the books children carry to and from school, the ministry will subsidize schools so that they can provide storage for use by students. In the initial stage, Pan said priority would be given to younger students at elementary schools in every city and county. In addition to having to carry heavy backpacks, the nation's primary and secondary students spend more hours at schools than their peers in other countries, Pan said, adding that Minister of Education Tu Cheng-sheng (杜正勝) had commissioned a panel of experts to look at the feasibility of implementing various adjustments and reforms to ease the burden on students.
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