■TRANSPORT
Traffic countdowns expanded
The Taipei City Government is expanding traffic signal countdowns to 75 major intersections starting next month in a move that is hoped will decrease collisions and reduce driver anxiety. Displaying a countdown on the traffic light allows drivers to anticipate the wait time and the need to slow down or stop and therefore decreases traffic incidents, a recent study by the Ministry of Transportation and Communications showed. Sheng Shu-hsian (沈淑賢), a division chief at Taipei City’s Transportation Department, said the department set up countdown mechanisms at five intersections last year and found that the number of accidents decreased, and so the city government decided to expand the measure to more sites this year.
■ENVIRONMENT
Coral polyps set to spawn
The coral polyps in the seas off the Kenting National Park in Pingtung will release eggs in the next few days, a senior coral reef observer said yesterday. Tsai Yung-chun (蔡永春) said he anticipated the spawning scale would be small this year. Tsai is planning to take a dive tonight to observe the expected natural phenomenon, which the experienced diver said took place once a year in Kenting. Tsai said that after tonight, he would be able to predict when the spawning would reach its peak. Full-moon nights in the lunar month of March have been the typical time for mass spawning in Kenting’s corals.
■SOCIETY
‘Zongzi’ world record set
A new world record for the largest zongzi — a traditional treat of glutinous rice stuffed with meat, mushrooms and other delicacies and steamed in bamboo leaves — was set yesterday in an activity held by the Yunlin County Government at Jenwen Park in Touliu City (斗六). More than 14,000 residents were on hand to witness the record-setting achievement and to get a taste of the 1,314kg zongzi made by a team of chefs from a Taichung City hotel. Head chef Lee Ching-hua (李慶華) said it took 20 people about 24 hours to make the zongzi. All the ingredients were sourced in Yunlin County, including 210kg of pork, 840kg of rice, more than 30,000 bamboo leaves, 90kg of peanuts and 90kg of mushrooms, Lee said. A Guinness World Records representative witnessed the event and certified the new world record.
■TOURISM
Four million visitors forecast
The number of people visiting Taiwan is expected to reach 4 million this year and rise to 4.25 million next year thanks to several international sporting events that will take place, a report released yesterday by the Council for Economic Planning and Development said. The arrivals are likely to bring in NT$180 billion (US$5.9 billion) to NT$192.1 billion in revenue to the country, the report said. Last year, visitor arrivals reached a record high of 3.72 million, the report said. Of this number, 1.65 million visitors said the purpose of their visit was tourism, an increase of 89.49 percent compared with 870,000 tourists in 2000, the report said. The council attributed the increase in visitor arrivals to the government’s efforts to enhance visitor convenience, such as setting up 80 tourist information service stations at major transportation points and establishing a travel information Web site that is available in both traditional and simplified Chinese characters, English, Japanese, Korean and German. A 24-hour travel information hotline has also been launched that can handle inquiries in Mandarin, English, Japanese and Korean, the report 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
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