■ HEALTH
Free liver screening
The Liver Disease Prevention and Treatment Research Foundation will offer free hepatitis screening tests at the Kaohsiung Chang Gung Memorial Hospital on Saturday. Hsu Chin-chuan (�?t), chief executive officer of the foundation, invited residents in the south yesterday to head to the hospital to get tested. Hsu said that liver disease is one of the main causes of death in Taiwan. He said that a higher ratio of people in remote areas suffer from liver cancer than in urban areas and that the survival rate among liver cancer patients in southern Taiwan was lower than in the north. One of the main reasons for this is “a lack of accurate knowledge concerning liver protection” in these areas, Hsu said, adding that many people suffering from liver problems in these areas often buy liver tonics and medicines advertised on unlicensed radio stations. Between 10,000 and 12,000 people die of liver cancer in Taiwan each year, with about 70 percent of the cases caused by hepatitis B and about 20 percent by hepatitis C, he said.
■ EVENTS
Cycling cup also about food
The 2008 Giant Cup Cycling Competition, scheduled to start on May 31, is not only an annual event for cycling lovers, but also for those who love local delicacies in Taichung County, Taichung County Government executive officer Su Guo-jyh said yesterday. The activity, now in its 14th year, will combine competition, food and scenery to attract cycling enthusiasts and food lovers. People can sign up for the 160km “Tachia-Kukuan Self-challenge Cycling Team” for a two-day, one-night event, he said. Participants will have a chance to taste famous local delicacies, such as butter cake and taro ice cream along the way, as well as experiencing an ecologically and environmentally friendly trip, he said. “For just NT$2,500, you can enjoy scenic views, hot springs and gourmet food along the way,” Su said.
■ SOCIETY
Taiwan photo relay posted
Photos of Taiwan taken by 190 photographers nationwide in a round-the-clock photo relay on April 26 have been posted on a blog, organizers said yesterday. The “24 hours in Taiwan” photographic activity gathered a number of pictures taken from all walks of life during one day, including some that show the production of tofu; vendors serving delicacies at night markets in the early hours; and a postman delivering mail early in the morning. Yang Chin-huango (楊錦煌), who initiated the activity, said a similar activity was held on Aug. 19, 1992, bringing together 192 photographers who recorded the lives of Taiwanese in the economic, political and social spheres. The photos can be viewed at www.wretch.cc/blog/yangphoto.
■ FOOD
Price of salt unchanged
Despite suffering from rising raw commodity prices and production costs, Taiyen (臺鹽), the only salt maker in the country, said yesterday it would not raise the price of salt. “Because of higher production costs, the company recorded a meager NT$47 million [US$1.54 million] in net profit last year, compared with NT$342 million in 2006,” Taiyen chairman Wu Chi-chang (吳啟章) said at a Legislative Yuan hearing. The company, which was privatized in 2003 as part of the nation’s commitments to the WTO, has faced serious competition from foreign imports of salt since 2004. Wu said the company’s low-price strategy, used to win back customers from its competitors, also led to shrinking revenues.
■ HEALTH
Cervical cancer testing low
While cervical cancer remains the second most common form of cancer among women in Taiwan, the screening rate is still low and the majority of Taiwanese women have little knowledge about the disease, the Formosa Cancer Foundation said yesterday. The foundation urged women to get both pap smear tests and the human papillomavirus (HPV) vaccine to prevent the disease. Yuan Chiu-chung (袁九重), superintendent of the Taipei City Hospital for Women and Children, said that many women in Taiwan do not receive regular pap smear tests for cervical cancer because they feel shy about going to see a doctor. A survey conducted by the foundation among 1,092 women aged 16 or over found that 30 percent of the respondents did not know how to prevent getting cervical cancer, with 20 percent believing that without sexual experience, they will not get the disease.
■ AGRICULTURE
Program enrollment begins
Enrollment has opened for the Council of Agriculture’s (COA) popular “Wandervogel” program this year, offering 1,200 people between the ages of 18 and 35 a chance to experience farm life and to consider working in the agricultural sector. Since the program began in 2006 as part of the COA’s efforts to inject new blood into the aging agricultural population, the number of applicants has exceeded the number of places offered each year, COA officials said yesterday. Registration kicked off on Tuesday for seven “Wandervogel” camps at COA-run agricultural research and extension stations in Taoyuan, Miaoli, Taichung, Tainan, Kaohsiung, Taitung and Hualien, and for a fishery camp at the COA Fisheries Research Institute in Keelung.
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