■ ENVIRONMENT
Protected birds released
Two birds listed as protected in Taiwan that were wounded and weak when they were caught on Kinmen earlier this month were yesterday released back into the wild on the island. A Eurasian Hobby caught in Hubao, Little Kinmen, on Oct. 11 was injured, weak and weighed just 150g. It was released back into the wild in good condition and weighing 200g by Kinmen National Park Administration (KNPA) zoologists. Meanwhile, a common kingfisher which was wounded and weak when it was caught in Chungshan Forest on Monday was also released in good health. The birds were released during a KNPA training workshop on caring for injured wildlife. Fifty volunteers took part in the workshop.
■ SCIENCE
Chemist to head ICSU
Taiwan-born Nobel laureate Lee Yuan-tseh (李遠哲) was elected on Thursday as the next president of the France-based International Council for Science (ICSU), Academia Sinica President Wong Chi-huey (翁啟惠) said. Wong said Lee, who is attending the ICSU’s annual assembly in Mozambique, accepted the new post at the urging of people in domestic and international academic circles. Lee won the Nobel Prize for chemistry in 1986 along with Hungarian-Canadian John Polanyi and American Dudley Herschbach. He is also a member of the Academia Sinica, where he served as president from January 1994 to October 2006. Lee will assume his new post at the ICSU in 2011, Wong said. Lee, who was the first Taiwanese to win a Nobel Prize, will become the first Taiwanese to assume the presidency of the ICSU, which is one of the most important international scientific institutes in the world in which Taiwan has participated, Wong said.
■ POLITICS
Taipei councilors to wed
Taipei City councilors Hou Kuan-chiung (侯冠群) of the New Party and Lee Yan-hsiu (李彥秀) of the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) yesterday announced they will get married on Nov. 9. The announcement came as a surprise to fellow councilors and the media, as they had kept their six-year relationship a secret. Hou and Lee, who have both served as their parties’ caucus whips, announced their wedding plans at a press conference at the Taipei City Council. They said their marriage would not affect their loyalty to their respective parties. They will be the first couple to get married while serving on the Taipei City Council.
■ CULTURE
Southern exhibition opens
The National Palace Museum in Taipei has launched a special exhibition in southern Taiwan on Asian art and culture to herald the establishment of the museum’s branch in Minsyong Township (民雄), Chiayi County, which is scheduled for completion in 2011. The exhibition is titled “Exploring Asia: Episode One of the National Palace Museum’s Southern Branch.” The exhibition will feature 117 items that encompass six different Asian art themes — Buddhist sculpture, religious scripture, fabrics and textiles, blue-and-white porcelain, tea culture and tradition, and Western trends in Asian art, National Palace Museum director Chou Kung-shin (周功鑫) said. Chou said that while most museums in Taiwan focus on Chinese-oriented art and culture, this exhibition would allow Taiwanese to learn more about treasured works from all over Asia, which will be the emphasis of the museum’s southern branch. The exhibition will run through Jan. 4 and admission is free until Oct. 31.
■ HEALTH
Eating contests canceled
Several eating competitions have been canceled or suspended following the death of a man during a contest, the Chinese-language United Daily News reported yesterday. The decision to cancel or suspend the eating contests came after Chen Chun-ying (陳俊英), a student at Tayeh University in Chiayi, suffocated on Wednesday during a steamed bun eating competition held by his school. Chen, who had eaten two large steamed buns in less than a minute to win his heat, vomited shortly after the contest then tried to run to the toilet, but fainted and died. Doctors confirmed that he died from suffocation caused by swallowing too much food. Chen’s parents said they were saddened by their son’s death and hoped such dangerous competitions would not be held. There are 13 eating competitions being held or planned across Taiwan, organized by local governments, agriculture associations or restaurant chains. But following Chen’s death, half of the competitions have been canceled or suspended. Yang Yu-hui (楊玉惠), an official from the Ministry of Education, was quoted as saying that schools would be barred from holding eating competitions.
■ CRIME
Police arrest Huang Chi
Police yesterday apprehended Huang Chao-kang (黃照岡), also known as “Huang Chi” (黃琪), who has allegedly been scamming people, including former president Chen Shui-bian (陳水扁), by pretending to be a UK-trained fortune teller. Police said they acted on a tip-off and found Huang at a motel in Sindian City (新店). Huang is suspected of faking his identity and forging documents, police said. Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) Legislator Chiu Yi (邱毅) earlier this month claimed that Huang reduced Chen to tears when he drew the “death” card during a reading for the former president. Chen’s office on Wednesday issued a statement saying that Chen knew a teenage self-proclaimed tarot card reader, but denied the teen had ever read cards for Chen.
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