SOCIETY
Canada D’eh set for June 27
The 2009 annual Canada D’eh Beach Party will be held on Saturday, June 27, at Shalun (沙崙) Beach near Tamsui (淡水) from noon to midnight, rain or shine. This year, along with fireworks, games, drinks and food, Grammy nominee Colby O’Donis will be among the musicians providing live entertainment. Tickets range from NT$450 for a single adult to NT$950 for family pack of two adults and two children and are on sale now. More information is available at www.canadiansociety.org.tw. Meanwhile, the Canadian Trade Office in Taipei and the Taichung City Government are inviting everyone to take part in a series of events from June 30 to July 5 in Taichung in celebration of Canada Day. The week-long series will feature an environmental film festival at the National Museum of Art, a street festival and a Canada Food Promotion. Details are available on the trade office’s Web site (www.canada.org.tw) or by calling (02) 2544-3000.
SOCIETY
Buddy Bear arrives from Germany
Taiwan received its own Buddy Bear from Germany last Saturday via the German Institute. With help from students at Fengshan and Fengshin high schools in Kaoshiung and the German School in Taipei, the bear was painted and given its own unique look on Saturday. The life-sized fiberglass sculpture will make an appearance on June 27 at the Taipei Film Festival, as the festival’s theme this year is Berlin, the institute said. The bear will go on tour next month and in September to coincide with the World Games in Kaoshiung and the Deaflympics in Taipei, it said. The institute is holding a competition to name the bear. Suggestions can be sent to the institute before Oct. 3. Nearly 1,300 Buddy Bears have been sent from Germany all over the world. More information on the bear-naming contect is available on the institute’s Web site at www.taipei.diplo.de.
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