■ DEFENSE
Taiwan to replace frigates
Taiwan plans to buy eight second-hand Perry-class frigates from the US despite improved ties with China, a local newspaper reported yesterday. The military hopes to arm them with a version of the advanced Aegis Combat System, which uses computers and radar to take out multiple targets, as well as sophisticated missile launch technology, the Chinese-language China Times reported. The Ministry of National Defense said in a reaction to the report that ageing frigates now serving the navy needed to be phased out, but that it had yet to decide on the type of vessels that would replace them. “The overall strategy of the armed forces will be taken into consideration as the defense ministry evaluates the plan,” it said in a statement, adding that the budget would be another factor to be weighed.
■ ART
Gauguin exhibition planned
Several works by the French post-impressionist Paul Gauguin are scheduled to be displayed in Taipei in November for the first time, the director of the Taipei Fine Arts Museum announced yesterday. Hsieh Hsiao-yun (謝小韞) said the paintings — hopefully more than 10 — would come from museums in Europe and the US. “So far, we have gained permission from the Kunstmuseum Basel in Switzerland to borrow the 1892 piece When Will you Marry,” Hsieh said. The 1899 work Three Tahitians will be borrowed from the National Galleries of Scotland, she said. The museum is still negotiating with other museums to borrow works such as Woman from Arles in the Public Garden: The Mistral from the Art Institute of Chicago and Harvesting of Grapes at Arles from a museum in Denmark.
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