■ EVENTS
Sculptors, start your shovels
An annual sand sculpture festival will be held from June 14 until June 29 on a 3km beach along the northeastern coast, which many have described as the best location for sand sculpting in the country. Local and foreign sand sculptors will knead and mold their creations on the beach stretching from Yenliao (鹽寮) to Fulong (福隆) in Taipei County, the Northeast and Ilan Coast National Scenic Area Administration, which is organizing the activity, said yesterday. Local schools, social workers’ groups and art associations have all joined in the preparations for this year’s event, creating many fantastic sand artworks, including two sculptures — an underwater world and the adventures of a sailor — measuring 14m by 7m, the administration said. Information is available at www.necoast-nsa.gov.tw.
■ EVENTS
Bitan races in spotlight
The opening ceremony for the 16th Taipei County Congressional Cup Dragon Boat Races was held at scenic Bitan (Green Lake, 碧潭) in Sindian (新店) yesterday. The event featured traditional dragon eye-dotting and river blessing rituals to mark the opening of the competition, which will run through June 15. The competition this year will feature an unprecedented 73 teams, organizers said, adding that it would help raise Bitan’s profile and boost the local tourism industry. Aside from the dragon boat competition, a series of activities will be held in the lead-up to the Dragon Boat Festival, including outdoor concerts and Taiwanese opera performances, organizers said. The annual Taipei County Congressional Cup Races are held in parallel with the Dragon Boat Festival, which this year falls on June 8.
■ RELIEF
Aid to China tallied up
Donations and pledges, including those of Taiwanese businesspeople operating in China, for earthquake relief in Sichuan Province amounted to 7.8 billion yuan (US$112.36 million) as of Wednesday, the Chinese State Council’s Taiwan Affairs Office said on Friday. A spokesman for the office said Taiwanese had donated 33 million yuan in relief and reconstruction supplies, including tents, satellite phones, concrete, medical supplies, food and medicine through the Red Cross, the Buddhist Compassion Relief Tzu Chi Foundation and other authorized channels. The spokesman assured donors that the funds and supplies would be distributed according to their wishes and to those in greatest need of assistance.
■ EXHIBITS
Pissarro at palace museum
The National Palace Museum will start its summer season by launching an exhibition focusing on works by renowned 19th century French impressionist Camille Pissarro. Museum Director-General Chou Kung-shin (周�? said the exhibition, called “Camille Pissarro: Family and Friends,” is showing 90 works by 24 19th century artists and will run through Aug. 17. The works are from the collection of the Ashmolean Museum of Art and Archaeology at Oxford University in the UK, home to the world’s most complete set of drawings and watercolors by Pissarro, Chou said. The exhibition focuses on Pissarro’s oil paintings, drawings, prints and letters, and includes works by three of his sons and a granddaughter. Works by painters of the Barbizon School and Pissarro’s fellows such as Jean-Francois Millet, Pierre-Auguste Renoir and Claude Monet have also been selected for the exhibition to put Pissarro’s achievements and influence in a wider perspective.
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