■ ACADEMIA
David Ho voted president
Academia Sinica researcher David Ho (賀端華) has been elected president of the American Society of Plant Biologists (ASPB), Academia Sinica said yesterday. The leading research institution in Taiwan said in a statement that this was the first time the world’s largest and most prestigious plant biology professional organization had elected an Asian for president. Ho’s three-year term will begin in October. Founded in 1924, the ASPB focuses on encouraging research in plant biology and promoting the development of molecular and cellular biology. The society has more than 5,000 members, 40 percent of whom are non-US citizens. Ho, a distinguished research fellow and the director of Academia Sinica’s Institute of Plant and Microbial Biology, has for years dedicated himself to research on plant biochemistry and molecular biology, Academia Sinica said.
■ HEALTH
Monitoring body created
An association has been created to enhance the quality of service provided by pharmacists in Taiwan and protect the safety of people using prescription drugs, founding members announced yesterday. The Quality Improvement for Pharmaceutical Affairs Association, Taiwan, was set up by pharmaceutical, public health, medicine and law experts to address the problem of a lack of information about the proper usage of drugs, which could put people’s health at risk, the members said. The association, which will focus on educating consumers about drug usage and drug safety, differs from the Union of Pharmacists Association, which is a society composed only of pharmacists to promote the sector’s interests. The association said its new priority would be to lower the number of prescriptions each pharmacist has to fill each day from 300 to 100 and to lobby the government to integrate its suggestions into the Pharmaceutical Affairs Act (藥事法).
■ POLITICS
President heads south
President Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九) will visit acquaintances in southern Taiwan from tomorrow until Monday as part of his effort to reach people at the grassroots level, Presidential Office spokesman Wang Yu-chi (王郁琦) said yesterday. Ma will visit friends he made during his “long stay” campaign in Yunlin and Chiayi counties, as well as attend the graduation ceremony at Tainan University of Technology. He is scheduled to stay overnight at the ROC Military Academy in Kaohsiung County, Wang said. Wang said Ma’s upcoming trip would provide the president with an opportunity to consolidate his friendships and was not aimed at dealing with the aftermath of the flood damage caused by torrential rains earlier this month.
■ AGRICULTURE
Black garlic unveiled
Kinmen County Commissioner Lee Chu-feng (李炷烽) unveiled the island’s latest tourist attraction yesterday — locally developed black garlic. Lee said he hoped the product, made using a special fermenting technique, would join the list of must-see items in Kinmen, which includes its kaoliang liquor and peanut candy. Lee made the remarks during a presentation of the unusual garlic, which was co-developed by the National Kinmen Institute of Technology, the Kinmen County Farmers’ Association, the Kinmen County Agricultural Research Institute and the Kinmen County Animal and Plant Disease Control Center. Lee said that black garlic, which does not smell like ordinary garlic, contains more nutritious elements, which could make it a popular health food.
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