■ EMTERTAINMENT
Film wins at India festival
A politically charged Taiwanese film set in the 1950s won the top prize at India's international film festival on Monday, stealing the limelight from a Pakistani film about Muslims in a post-Sept. 11, 2001, world. The Wall, directed by Lin Chih-ju (林志儒), beat 13 films to win the Golden Peacock award for best film at the closing ceremony of the 38th International Film Festival of India in Goa. The story of a Japanese socialist hiding from Taiwanese authorities appealed to the jury for its depiction of ordinary people coping in politically challenging times. "As an audience, we were able to relate to something as abstract as politics through the real emotions of human beings," said jury member Robert Sarkies, a filmmaker from New Zealand. "Other films that touch upon political issues get lost in complexity." The film festival had screened 176 films from 46 countries by the time it wrapped up on Monday.
■ EDUCATION
Students top science test
Taiwanese students ranked first in science and fourth in mathematics in an international assessment program sponsored by the OECD, the Ministry of Education said yesterday while lauding the success of domestic educational reforms. A total of 8,815 15-year olds from 240 schools across the country participated in the Program for International Student Assessment, which was administered last year and involved about 400,000 students in 57 countries. Taiwan took 16th place in reading. The National Teachers' Association, however, said the rankings were meaningless because they did not reflect the ability of students but only that the local curriculum resembled those in the West. The association also said that the results could not be used as a benchmark to measure the progress of educational reform because it was the first time Taiwan participated in the test.
■ DIPLOMACY
China upset over US transit
China yesterday expressed "grave concern" over a US aircraft carrier's transit through the Taiwan Strait after Beijing denied it permission to make a port call in Hong Kong. "China has expressed grave concern to the US and requested that it take prudent moves in this highly sensitive area," Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Qin Gang (秦剛) told reporters. The US expressed anger after China abruptly canceled a long-planned Hong Kong port call on Nov. 21 to Nov. 24 by the aircraft carrier USS Kitty Hawk and its battle group, sparking one of the sharpest diplomatic rows in years. The ship subsequently made for Japan, passing through the Taiwan Strait in what is believed to be the first such transit by a US aircraft carrier since 2002. US officials have said the route was chosen to avoid a storm further out to sea. But some analysts have said the carrier's passage through the strait was intended as a signal of US displeasure with China over the port call denial, as well as Beijing's ongoing military build-up aimed at Taiwan.
■ DIPLOMACY
Gambian president arrives
Gambian President Yahya Jammeh arrived in Taiwan yesterday for a five-day visit, Ministry of Foreign Affairs officials said. This is Jammeh's seventh visit to Taiwan as head of state, the officials said. During his visit, Jammeh will meet President Chen Shui-bian (陳水扁) and visit Asustek Computer Inc, Motech Industries Inc, Sun Ten Pharmaceutical Co and the Fisheries Research Institute, they 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