■ SOCIETY
Lu officiates weddings
Vice President Annette Lu (呂秀蓮) officiated at a mass wedding ceremony of 32 couples at the Hsinchu Science Park yesterday. Lu exhorted the 64 grooms and brides -- all scientists, technicians or staff working for companies at the park -- to respect their marriage vows. She called on the newlyweds to forgive and be patient with each other, adding that there are inevitable ups and downs and twists and turns in married life. But the virtue of "thinking about the other's goodness," she said, would help them overcome the difficulties they will likely encounter in their marriages.
■ MEDIA
`China Post' Web site hacked
The Web site of the English-language daily the China Post was closed for more than two hours yesterday morning after its site administrators discovered that hackers had added profanities to the headlines of every story. The newspaper was not aware of the attack, which saw the f-word placed in each headline, until they began receiving telephone calls from readers at around 9am. The newspaper was forced to shut down its Web site, which did not resume normal operations until yesterday afternoon. The newspaper is still trying to determine the identity of the hackers. A similar incident occurred about four months ago, where the home page of the Chinese-language Liberty Times (the Taipei Times' sister newspaper) was turned into the Chinese national flag.
■ HEALTH
Taipei pressures drug maker
Taipei requested yesterday that Akzo Nobel, the Netherlands' largest pharmaceutical firm, quickly sign a contract to produce flu vaccines or it would be forced to find another partner to ensure flu control, state media reported yesterday. The Centers for Disease Control (CDC) selected the Dutch company in July last year for a build, own and operate (BOO) project for the production of flu vaccines and the two parties were about to sign a contract this year. But progress was hampered by a separate deal in March between Schering Plough, a global research-based pharma-ceutical company, and Akzo Nobel, under which the Dutch firm agreed to sell its vaccine research and development unit -- Organon Biosciences -- to Schering Plough. As the acquisition agreement would only be completed by the final quarter of this year, it would be impossible for the Dutch firm to give CDC a timetable on signing the BOO deal with Taiwan, the agency said.
■ TRAVEL
Global trekkers arrive
A Swiss couple arrived in Taiwan after driving through 156 countries on their around-the-world trip that began 23 years ago, a Chinese-language newspaper reported yesterday. Emil Schmid, 65, and Liliana Schmid, 66, arrived from East Timor and kicked off their trip across Taiwan on Saturday from Kaohsiung, after their Toyota Land Cruiser arrived in the city. They began their around-the-world trip on Oct. 18, 1984, traveling to the US. Emil was a computer software engineer and their global adventure began with the simple wish to get away from schedules for a year. But one year's travel proved insufficient, so they kept prolonging it and have not stopped since. Over the past 23 years, they have visited North America, South America, Africa, Europe and Southeast Asia, returning to Switzerland on just three occasions.
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