■ ENVIRONMENT
Heavy dust on the way
People with cardiopulmonary or respiratory diseases should stay indoors and avoid strenuous activities today and tomorrow because Taiwan will be enveloped by heavy dust from Inner Mongolia in China, the Environmental Protection Administration (EPA) said yesterday. “A cold front passed through the northern part of the island today [Saturday], bringing with it air pollutants from Inner Mongolia and central China. The front will move southward today, bringing cold weather and dust to southern Taiwan,” the Department of Environmental Monitoring and Information Management said. Rain may reduce the air pollutants in some parts of the country, the department said. The EPA urges the public to avoid spending unnecessary time outdoors, particularly in the case of children, the elderly and those with heart or respiratory problems.
■ CULTURE
Museum crowds growing
The National Palace Museum is considering measures to manage crowds, as the influx of Chinese tourists has put a strain on service to visitors, a senior curator said yesterday. The museum is a favorite destination for Chinese visitors, resulting in overcrowding in the most popular display rooms and galleries since the number of Chinese tourists rose significantly last month, museum deputy director Feng Ming-chu (馮明珠) said. In the past, Feng said, the number of visitors per day exceeded 8,000 only on holidays. “But nowadays the number tends to surpass the 8,000 mark every day,” she said. Feng said the number of Chinese visitors was expected to increase following the launch of regularly scheduled flights across the Taiwan Strait, leading the museum to seek measures to deal with bigger crowds.
■ SOCIETY
Falun Gong stage protest
About 1,000 Falun Gong practitioners gathered at Liberty Square yesterday, demanding that Beijing stop its persecution of their group. Activists were there to mark the 10th anniversary of a 10,000-strong silent protest by Falun Gong followers in Beijing. The Beijing rally sparked a crackdown on the group. Chang Ching-hsi (張清溪), an economics professor at National Taiwan University and a Falun Gong practitioner, said that despite the crackdown, “Falun Gong has not collapsed. Instead, it has spread to more than 100 countries.” He estimated that there were 500,000 Falun Gong practitioners in Taiwan. The rally at Liberty Square drew some curious Chinese tourists, who hurriedly posed for photos before being led off by tour guides.
■ POLITICS
Lu urges Chen to keep out
Former vice president Annette Lu (呂秀蓮) said yesterday it would be “inappropriate” and “unnecessary” for former president Chen Shui-bian (陳水扁) to rejoin the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) at the moment. Lu made the remarks in response to media reports that Chen told Hsu Chieh-yuan (??, an executive committee member of the DPP Taipei City Branch, during a visit on Thursday that he would be willing to rejoin the party if it invited him. Chen, who is being held at the Taipei Detention Center, is being tried on counts of embezzlement, money laundering, taking bribes and forgery. Lu said Chen’s top priority should be to remain healthy and prove his innocence, adding that during a recent visit, he had not mentioned rejoining the party. Chen withdrew from the party in August.
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