■POLITICS
Movement changes name
The pro-independence Hand-in-Hand Taiwan Alliance (手護台灣大聯盟) yesterday changed its name to Taiwan National Alliance (台灣國家聯盟), with former Examination Yuan president Yao Chia-wen (姚嘉文) replacing former president Lee Teng-hui (李登輝) as convener. Yao told a press conference in Taipei yesterday that the 84-year-old Lee had decided to hand over the position because of his age, adding that Lee would continue to support the alliance. Yao said the group would continue to scrutinize the government and work to safeguard the nation’s sovereignty. The alliance said it hoped to cooperate with other pro-Taiwan groups to “build Taiwan as a new country.”
■SOCIETY
City eyes Sizihwan beach
Kaohsiung Mayor Chen Chu (陳菊) said yesterday the city government could assume control of Sizihwan beach (西子灣), which is currently administrated by National Sun Yat-sen University, after residents complained of being charged a fee by the university to access the beach. Chen told reporters the city government had agreed to allow the university to manage the beach for educational purposes after the school was founded. However, Sizihwan beach belongs to all residents of Kaohsiung and it was very “unreasonable” for the university to charge visitors an NT$100 admission fee, she said. Chen said the city government would hold talks with the university and consult the city’s Legal Affairs Bureau about the possibility of taking over the beach.
■ART
Literature catalogue unveiled
The National Museum of Taiwan Literature in Tainan said yesterday it would unveil on Friday a new databank that contains more than 100,000 titles of works by some 2,500 Taiwanese writers. The museum said the Chinese-language catalogue consists of three volumes covering all types of writing — narrative, novels, essays, poetry, drama, reportage, autobiographies, diaries, letters and children’s literature. The museum said it had commissioned Wen Hsun magazine, which is owned by the Taiwan Literature Development Foundation, to collect information and compile the catalogue, an exercise that required two years. After the catalogue is released on Friday, it will be accessible on the Internet and searchable by keyword.
■MEDICINE
‘Danshen’ mass produced
The Council of Agriculture’s Agricultural Research Institute said on Monday it had developed a new technique to grow danshen, a herb widely used in Chinese medicine to treat cardiovascular disorders. Chen Wei-chen, an associate research fellow at the institute’s bio-technology division, said that after six years of experimentation, experts at the institute were now able to grow danshen on a large scale, with more than 90 percent of the seedlings transplanted from a nursery growing successfully on farmland. The danshen grown in this manner contains 50 percent more tanshinones, the anticoagulant agent found in the plant’s roots, than the herb sold on the market, Chen said. He said the technology would be shared with the private sector for mass production. Danshen, also known as Salvia miltiorrhiza, is widely used in herbal medicine to treat atherosclerosis — the hardening of the arteries with cholesterol plaque — and blood clotting abnormalities.
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