■ EDUCATION
Minister mum on dispute
Minister of Education Cheng Jei-cheng (鄭瑞城) yesterday declined to comment on National Chengchi University’s refusal to renew the teaching contract of former Ministry of Education secretary-general Chuang Kuo-rong (莊國榮), who drew strong criticism as a ministry official for comments about then-presidential candidate Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九) and for his handling of the name change of National Taiwan Democracy Memorial Hall. The university said it would not renew Chuang’s contract on Wednesday, citing “gender discrimination” and “indecent speech” as the reasons. The university said a profane comment Chuang made one week before the election about Ma’s father was inappropriate. Chuang had earlier also called Ma “a weakling” and insinuated that Ma and Taipei Mayor Hau Lung-bin (郝龍斌) were homosexual. After losing his contract, Chuang said he hoped the ministry would stand by him.
■ BIOLOGY
Unknown beetle discovered
A biologist at Kenting National Park in Pingtung County has spotted an unknown species of longhorn beetle, sources at the park administration said yesterday. The sources said that a new species of longhorn beetle was first found in 2003 by Chung Yi-ting (鍾奕霆), a researcher at the park’s Houbihu Service Station, and that Chung spotted the same species a second time earlier this year. Several taxonomists who had examined the specimen said the latest longhorn beetle of euryclytosemia genus may be a new species. The park administration has decided to request assistance from other experts around the world to certify the findings. Currently, only one species of the euryclytosemia genus has been spotted in Taiwan.
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