■FILM
‘Port of Return’ up for award
The Taiwanese animated film Port of Return (靠岸) has been nominated for Best Feature Film at this year’s 14th Seoul International Cartoon and Animation Festival, the film’s production company said yesterday. The film will compete with four other films from the Czech Republic, Japan, Denmark and South Korea next month, Spring House Entertainment Inc said. The festival is an annual competition for animation, cartoon and related genres that has been held in South Korea since 1995. A total of 1,332 films from 52 countries will be shown at this year’s festival, the company said. Port of Return, directed by cartoonist Chang Jung- kuei (張榮貴), has been touted as a milestone for the local animation industry. The film took four years to complete and reportedly cost NT$120 million (US$3.7 million). It will soon become the first animated film screened on the Kland Channel, a mobile phone service established by Spring House Entertainment.
■SOCIETY
Dragon Boat race gearing up
More than 130 teams from across Taiwan and around the world will participate in this year’s Taipei International Dragon Boat Championships, Taipei Sports Office, the sponsoring organization, said on its Web site. Taipei European School, Taipei Japanese School, the New Zealand Commerce and Industrial Office and the Philippine national team will join the races from today until Sunday at Taipei’s Dajia Riverside Park. In addition to the annual championships, the festivities will feature riverside fun including food stands, games, concerts and other activities, the organizers said. To celebrate the coming Flora Expo, “flower fairies” — the exposition’s mascot — will attend the festival and be available for photo opportunities. In a salute to the Dragon Boat Festival’s “egg standing” tradition, in which people are said to have a year of good luck if they can balance an egg upright at noon on the fifth day of the fifth month of the lunar calendar, organizers will hold an egg-dropping competition.
■SOCIETY
Lake to host mass wedding
Couples with special love stories about Sun Moon Lake will have a chance to hold their weddings at the scenic area in a group wedding organized by the local tourism authority. After the success of last year’s group wedding, the Sun Moon Lake National Scenic Area Administration said it would choose 20 couples to participate in this year’s event on July 9 and July 10. The administration said most of the 10 couples who participated last year did so because Sun Moon Lake played a role in their relationship, and that this year couples would be asked to share their stories about the resort. Selected couples will be able to purchase a wedding package worth NT$50,000 (US$1,545) for just NT$7,999, including the wedding, one night’s accommodation, meals at the hotel and a boat tour.
■SPORTS
Photo competition to be held
The German trade office in Taipei yesterday invited Taiwanese to take part in a photography competition that will be held during this year’s FIFA World Cup in South Africa from today to July 11. Creative and interesting photos of scenes related to the World Cup may be submitted on the office’s Web site during the one-month period, after which three photos will be selected for the top prizes, the Deutsches Institut Taipei said. More information on the photography competition can be obtained 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