■ CRIME
Fake brands seized
Kaohsiung City police arrested a man suspected of selling counterfeit brand-name children's clothing, a police official said yesterday. Around 500 pieces of counterfeit goods were also seized in the raid. The official said that the suspect, surnamed Chang, was caught selling the high-quality counterfeit products at a market in the city. Police are investigating to locate the suppliers of the counterfeit products, the official said.
■ TRANSPORT
Alishan station reopens
The Alishan Railway Station in Chiayi County was reopened yesterday after years of reconstruction following damage sustained during the devastating 921 earthquake in 1999. The first train to depart from the station was an antique train with wooden carriages and powered by a steam locomotive. Chiayi Forest District Office Director Yeh Hsien-liang (葉賢良) said the two-story station is the largest wooden railway station in the country. From the balcony on the second floor of the station, travelers are able to see Alishan's (阿里山) scenic landscapes and "cloud sea," Yeh said. The station lies on the Alishan Forest Railway, which starts in Chiayi City and meanders through Chiayi and Nantou counties, carrying passengers up and down the mountain.
■ SCIENCE
Penghu hosts scientists
Magnetic field detection operations in a nationwide geological survey started this week on Penghu, the fourth and final stage of the project, academic sources said on Wednesday. The project, conducted by the Hsinchu-based Industrial Technology Research Institute, has already visited Ilan, Hualien and Pingtung counties, and its work in Penghu is expected to take 45 days. The institute said the goal of the project is to better understand the nation's geological structures, as well as to lay the foundation for future studies.
■ LIVESTOCK
Banned drug detected
A goose from a fowl farm in Taoyuan County has been found to contain salbutamol, a banned drug used to promote the growth of lean meat in livestock, the director general of the Department of Health's Bureau of Food Sanitation said yesterday. Cheng Hui-wen (鄭惠文) made the announcement while making public the results of the bureau's spot checks on marketed geese around the country last month. One of 19 samples for banned drug tests was found to have excessive traces of salbutamol, Cheng said, adding that the problematic sample was taken from the Yung Yu goose farm. The farm faces a fine of between NT$30,000 and NT$150,000, he said.
■ Tourism
Delegation targets Singapore
A tourism delegation organized by the Taiwan Visitors Association (TVA) will take part in a Singapore international travel fair to attract tourists from the city state. Speaking at a press conference, TVA Advisor Shao Chung-hua (邵仲華), who is leading the delegation, said Taiwan's Tourism Bureau has set a growth target rate for Singaporean and Malaysian tourists to Taiwan this year at 7 percent. According to Shao, around 180,000 tourists from Singapore visited Taiwan last year, an annual growth rate of 10.8 percent, while the number of tourists from Malaysia rose 7.2 percent. Meanwhile, Chi Cheng (紀政), chairman of the Organizing Committee for the 2009 World Games, to be held in Kaohsiung, will also lead a group to Singapore with a view to attracting visitors.
■ CULTURE
Cross-strait festival
A group of 110 academics and members of various performance troupes from Taiwan plan to take part in the first Cross-Taiwan Strait Folk Arts Festival from Sept. 21 to Sept. 24 in Xiamen, Fujian Province. A 20-member delegation from Kinmen County, led by the county government's Cultural Affairs Bureau Director Li Hsi-lung (李錫隆), will also attend the festival. All the Taiwanese participants are to travel directly to Xiamen by boat from the island of Kinmen. The festival is sponsored by the Chinese Friendship Association of Culture, the Xiamen municipal government and the Fujian Provincial Government.
■ DIPLOMACY
Vietnam protests airstrip
Vietnam issued a statement yesterday protesting against Taiwan's plan to build an airstrip on one of the disputed Spratly islands. Taiwanese defense officials have said they plan to build an airfield on what Vietnam calls Itu Aba, the largest of the Spratlys, a chain of islands and rocky outcrops in the South China Sea. "Vietnam possesses adequate historical evidence and legal foundations to proclaim its sovereignty over the Hoang Sa [Paracel] and Truong Sa [Spratly] archipelagos," Vietnam's Foreign Ministry spokesman Le Dung said. "All activities in the Hoang Sa and Truong Sa archipelagos which are not approved by Vietnam are violations of Vietnam's sovereignty in these areas and are devoid of legal merit," he said. Dung said Vietnam "urges Taiwan to immediately desist from continuing with its plan as well as similar activities in the Truong Sa archipelago." The Spratlys are claimed in full or in part by China, Vietnam, the Philippines, Malaysia, Brunei and Taiwan.
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