■CULTURE
Free tickets on offer
The Taipei City Government has invited the public to join a celebration of the birth of Confucius at the Taipei Confucius Temple on Sept. 27 and Sept. 28, and to enjoy a series of traditional rituals and ancient music. Taipei City’s Civil Affairs Department will give out 500 guest passes for a rehearsal ceremony to be held on Sept. 27 and another 500 guest passes for the formal celebration on Sept. 28. Those interested can obtain a pass from the manager’s office at the Taipei Confucius Temple between 2pm and 5pm between Tuesday and Friday next week. The department called on those who have guest passes for the formal ceremony to arrive at the temple before 6am on Sept. 28. The temple will be closed to the general public during the ceremony, which runs from 6am to 8am. For more information call (02) 2592-3934.
■INDUSTRY
Yongkang woos polluters
Tainan County will build an independent waste water treatment system in a new industrial park in Yongkang City (永康市) to allow electroplating firms to avoid polluting the water supply during production. The electroplating sector, a crucial link in the car manufacturing industry, has always been tagged as a “killer” of rivers because it causes water contamination, a county government official said. As a result, many electroplating plants have been operating illegally, he added. To boost the nation’s auto parts manufacturing sector, the local government will help such underground firms to obtain legal status so that they can invest in a designated area of the Yongkang Science and Technology Park where water pollution would not be a problem, the official said, expressing the hope that at least 50 firms would invest in the 9 hectare site near an incinerator in Yongkang City. Waste water from the electroplating firms will be processed in a separate treatment system, which includes independent pipelines and retention pools, and will not be discharged outside the satellite park, the official said.
■DIPLOMACY
Lai arrives in St Kitts
Judicial Yuan President Lai In-jaw (賴英照) arrived in St Kitts and Nevis yesterday as the nation’s special envoy to attend the celebrations for the eastern Caribbean nation’s 25th anniversary of independence. The delegation’s itinerary includes visits to Taiwan’s agricultural missions and the site of the construction of a gymnasium being sponsored by the nation. Lai will also visit the Central American countries of El Salvador and Guatemala to exchange information on judicial systems, a Ministry of Foreign Affairs official said. St Kitts and Nevis gained independence from Britain in 1983 and has had diplomatic relations with Taiwan ever since.
■HEALTH
Free flu jabs announced
Free influenza inoculations will be offered starting on Oct. 1, with priority groups expanded to include third and fourth graders. The Centers for Disease Control (CDC) said in a statement that it has purchased 3.2 million doses of flu vaccine for the free inoculations offered to high-risk groups ahead of the high season for flu infections. In the past, priority groups included children aged between six months and three years, those aged 65 or over, medical and epidemic control personnel, bird and poultry industry handlers, and detainees in public and private shelters, as well as first and second-grade school children. This year, third and fourth graders at elementary schools will also be offered the free vaccinations, the statement said.
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