■ SOCIETY
Addicts turn to violins
Violin lessons have been of great benefit in the rehabilitation of 40 drug abusers over the past six months, the Taichung Drug Abuse Treatment Center said. Center director Chou Hui-huang (周輝煌) said the violin class was first offered last July. Under the guidance of violinist Wu Wen-tung (吳文棟), a former conductor of the Chi Mei Mandolin Orchestra, 20 drug abusers attended a three-hour class every week and learned the basics of the instrument in three months. They performed in a concert at the end of the program and the overwhelming public response to the program prompted the center to invite the teacher to conduct a second class, taking on 20 more addicts. Chou said the addicts built new value systems and found the strength to fight addiction. He said the center would continue with its violin rehabilitation program.
■ SOCIETY
Cycling pilgrimage planned
A second cycling activity along a traditional religious pilgrimage route in central Taiwan will be organized later this month in the hope of “rolling out blessings” for the country, Sports Affairs Council Vice Minister Lin Kuo-tung (林國棟) said. Lin said he hoped the number of participants would break the world record set last year, when more than 2,150 cyclists rode together for 3.2km. This year, after assembling in Tachia Township (大甲) in Taichung County on the morning of Feb. 21, the participants will ride 130km past three temples in one day. The cyclists will go along part of the 280km route that followers of Matzu (媽祖), the Chinese goddess of the sea, usually take to accompany her statue to Hsinkang Township (新港) in Chiayi County in a prominent religious tradition. A less strenuous 20km route will be open to families and other less ambitious cyclists, the council 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