■WEATHER
Rainy week ahead
The nation — including Penghu, Kinmen and Matsu — will see cloudy skies with a high chance of rain throughout the coming week, the Central Weather Bureau said yesterday. Bureau meteorologists said the high chances of rain were the result of a waning high pressure system in the western Pacific that was allowing a cloud system in the south of the region to feed humid air over Taiwan. Their forecast said central and eastern areas would see cloudy skies next week, with occasional showers or thunderstorms, while the north would also see cloudy skies, with occasional showers or thunderstorms in the afternoon. Southern and southeastern regions, as well as the Penghu, Kinmen and Matsu island groups, would all experience mostly cloudy skies this week, with a greater chance of showers and thunderstorms. Temperatures were expected to be between 25˚C and 33˚C in the north, 24˚C to 32˚C in central, eastern and southern areas, and 25˚C to 31˚C for Penghu, Kinmen and Matsu.
■LEGISLATURE
Parties snipe at each other
The Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) and Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) caucuses accused each other over the legislature’s limited achievements during the current session, which will end on Friday. So far, the legislature has only passed five of the 59 bills the KMT caucus had promised to prioritize since the beginning of the session. The five bills that have passed include an amendment to the Statute Governing the Relations Between the Peoples of the Taiwan Area and the Mainland Area (兩岸人民關係條例) that legalizes currency exchange between the New Taiwan dollar and yuan and one that officially cuts the salary of the president and vice president. KMT caucus whip Lin Yi-shih (林益世) defended the KMT caucus’ performance, saying that it needed to show respect for opposition parties by referring controversial legislation to cross-party negotiations rather than seeking a vote on every bill.
■TOURISM
Maokong takes a break
The Maokong Gondola will be closed between today and next Tuesday for major maintenance work, the Taipei City Government’s Department of Transportation said yesterday. Officials said that during the maintenance work, the city government would ask that city buses to and from the Maokong area increase the frequency of buses to accommodate passengers. The 4km cable car system is operated by the Taipei Rapid Transit Corp (TRTC). TRTC officials said that since its inauguration on July 4 last year, the system has operated for more than 4,500 hours with regular service and checkups every Monday, and has carried more than 5.12 million passengers to date.
■SOCIETY
Professor commits suicide
A Russian professor at Tamkang University in Tamshui, Taipei County, has committed suicide, with chronic depression the suspected cause, police said yesterday. Vasily Kryukov, 46, an associate professor at Tamkang University, leapt from the window of his apartment at about 7pm on Saturday, a duty officer from the Tamsui Police Bureau said. A security guard rushed him to hospital, but Kryukov died on the way there. Police found anti-depressants in Kryukov’s apartment. Kryukov was one of six Russian professors at the university’s Russian language department. Kryukov came to Taiwan in 2004 to teach Russian literature at the university. He held a doctorate from Russia’s Institute of Oriental Studies and wrote several books on Russian literature.
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