■POLITICS
Ma’s humor draws ire
A joke by President Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九) during a visit to a temporary shelter for the displaced victims of Typhoon Morakot in Chiayi County yesterday drew ire from some victims, who said it was shallow and ill-timed. The incident started when an Aborginal typhoon survivor interrupted Ma’s speech. Holding up a banner, the woman stood up in the audience and appealed to Ma, shouting: “Mr President, please save us.” In response, Ma said: “Let me finish talking, then [I will come back and] save you.” After Ma finished his speech, Ma turned to the woman and said: “Okay, now let us save you.” While Ma’s response elicited a round of laughter from the audience, some were not amused. “Ma, as president, should not respond in such a shallow way,” a victim said. “Not to mention that at a time like this, it is really not appropriate for the president to respond by making such jokes.”
■EVENTS
CowParade to be ox-tioned
A total of 42 fiberglass ox sculptures from the international art exhibition CowParade Taipei 2009 will be auctioned tomorrow to raise money for charity. “The Cow for Charity auction will mark a perfect conclusion to the unprecedented art event after it toured Taipei and Taichung,” said the organizers, adding that part of the auction revenue would be used to help with the reconstruction operations in disaster areas. The auction will be held at Huashan Creative Park in Taipei and will feature 42 of the 107 ox sculptures displayed in the CowParade exhibition, the organizers said. Bidding will start at between NT$200,000 and NT$400,000.
■EVENTS
Artists take on the flood
Sixteen artists and a string of musicians from Taipei’s expatriate community are doing their bit for Typhoon Morakot relief efforts by staging a live art auction called “Artists Beat the Flood” today from 10am to 10pm at Lili’s Gallery and Restaurant in Tianmu (天母). All proceeds will go to helping those affected by the typhoon, organizers said. The NT$500 cover charge will include a snack, drinks and all-day admission. Bidding starts at 12pm and end at 8:30pm. For more details, visit the Web site www.community.com.tw.
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