■ WEATHER
Cold front arrives
A cold front will approach Taiwan today, followed by the arrival of a cold continental air mass tomorrow with temperatures plunging to as low as 11ºC in central and northern parts of the country until Sunday, the Central Weather Bureau said yesterday. Meteorologists said the cold front would bring rain to almost all parts of the country in the next three days, with the exception of southern Taiwan. Starting on Thursday, most parts of the country will see cold, dry weather under sunny skies, while showers are expected for northeastern areas and cloudy skies in the east. On the outlying islands of Matsu and Kinmen, temperatures between Thursday and Sunday will drop to 6ºC and 10ºC respectively, the bureau said.
■ SOCIETY
Democracy hall holds auction
A charity auction of artwork by 52 local artists opens today and will run until Jan. 16 at the National Taiwan Democracy Memorial Hall art gallery to help the Chou Ta-kuan Cultural and Educational Foundation raise operating funds, foundation officials said yesterday. Among the 52 artists who donated work for the auction are renowned painters Au Ho-nien (歐豪年) and Lee Chi-mao (李奇茂). Management at the National Taiwan Democracy Memorial Hall sought help from the artists after its executives learned that the foundation had exhausted its funds. The foundation was down to just NT$565 in October, prompting its members to take to the streets to seek donations from the public for its Melody of Hope Awards and Scholarships. The foundation was established in 1997 by the parents of Chou Ta-kuan (周大觀), a young poet who died of cancer at the age of 10, to commemorate his love for life and unwavering spirit in his fight against cancer.
■ SOCIETY
Yeh to get monument
The Kaohsiung City Government will erect a monument in memory of late Taiwanese writer Yeh Shih-tao (葉石濤), Kaohsiung Mayor Chen Chu (陳菊) said yesterday. During a memorial service for Yeh, who died of cancer in Kaohsiung on Dec. 11 at the age of 84, Chen said that although Yeh was persecuted during the White Terror era, he had been able to uphold his moral standards. “He was able to maintain a free and noble literary mind, just like he said in his brief account of himself: ‘I am determined to fight for Taiwanese literature for the rest of my life. Such a resolution has helped me disregard fame and wealth so that I can always write what I want to,’” Chen said. Yeh was noted as a premier writer of modern Taiwanese literature.
■ CRIME
Student falsifies deaths
A college student has been indicted for falsifying the death of his grandfather, granduncle and grandaunt to claim funeral subsidies from a senior citizens’ club, the Liberty Times (the Taipei Times’ sister paper) reported on Saturday. The report said a law student, surnamed Chang, claimed the funeral subsidy for her grandfather, granduncle and grandaunt in June because she was short of money. Chang’s grandfather, granduncle and grandaunt had paid a fee to join the Evergreen Club in Taichung City. When a member dies, the club offers NT$600,000 in funeral subsidy. Chang used her computer to falsify death certificates for her elderly relatives, claiming they had died from illnesses at three different hospitals. Chang took the death certificates to the club to claim a total of NT$180,000. Staff at the club found the death certificates suspicious because they had not been stamped with seals from the three hospitals and reported her to police.
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