■ SOCIETY
Sushi record slips by
A failed attempt to make the world's longest roll of sushi was reported in Hualien County on Saturday. The plan was unsucccessful despite drawing around 2,500 people to help out. According to the Yuli (玉里)-based Yuhsi Farmers' Association, which launched the challenge to the existing Guinness World Record for the longest roll of sushi at 1,500m, 1,800 people gathered to make a roll of sushi with a planned length of 1,501m. The bid attracted many local residents for the chane to help set a world record. However, the party of up to 2,500 sushi makers failed because of a shortage of food materials, including rice, cucumbers and laver. Association members said they would make another attempt to set the record next year.
■ CHARITY
Library needs `wheels'
A pediatric cardiac surgeon in Hualien County is soliciting donations for a new "library on wheels" to allow underprivileged Aboriginal children in remote areas to have access to more books. Chen Li-yun (陳麗雲), a mother of three, built her first library on wheels using a 20 foot (6.1m) shipping container mounted on a leased trailer and stocked it with about 1,000 illustrated children's books. That was four years ago, but the mobile library had to end its visits to coastal and remote mountain communities recently because of a lack of funds. It is now stationed at Tongmen Elementary School in Tongmen Village (銅門), Hsiulin Township (秀林). Chen expressed her appreciation to volunteer mothers around the county who had helped out by reading stories to children. Some volunteers stayed overnight and even slept on the floor of the library, she said.
■ SOCIETY
Foreigners wanted
Foreigners who are interested in competing in the "2008 If I Were the President of Taiwan" Chinese-language speech competition need to sign up before Jan. 5, the contest's co-sponsors, National Taiwan Normal University and Radio Taiwan International, announced yesterday. The preliminary round will be held at NTNU on Jan. 13 and the top twenty winners will face off a week later at the radio station for the top cash prize of NT$50,000. As an effort to encourage foreigners to learn the different languages in Taiwan, judges will give extra points to those who can use any two of three designated languages in their speeches: Mandarin, Hoklo, and Hakka. Registration forms can be downloaded from Radio Taiwan International's official Web site at www.rti.org.tw or call (02) 2885-6286 ext 723 for details.
■ EDUCATION
Chief defends expense
The director of Kaohsiung City's education bureau, Cheng Ying-yao (鄭英耀), yesterday defended holding bureau staff meetings at a luxury resort. Cheng made the comments after the Chinese-language Apple Daily reported yesterday that the bureau spent NT$250,000 (US$7,600) on holding seminars at the Yoho Spa & Resorts in Kenting for 75 city government officials on Friday and Saturday. The story criticized the bureau for wasting public funds despite the fact that Premier Chang Chun-hsiung (張俊雄) on Nov. 13 had promised to review the amount of money government agencies spend each year on meetings and training seminars held in resorts and luxury hotels. Cheng said yesterday that the bureau had followed Cabinet regulations on the expenditure for government seminars, adding that it deliberately chose to hold the seminars during Kenting's off-season.
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