■POLITICS
Ask Paul, Tsai says
Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) Chairperson Tsai Ing-wen (蔡英文) yesterday showed she was no stranger to the hype surrounding the World Cup, telling reporters they should ask Germany’s tentacled oracle Paul who would win the Sinbei City election in November. Paul, an octopus residing in the Sea Life Aquarium in Oberhausen, gained worldwide fame after he correctly predicted the winners of eight World Cup matches in a row. The fortune-telling cephalopod predicted Spain’s 1-0 win over the second-placed Netherlands in the final. Deflecting questions on how she saw her election chances, Tsai, who admitted she was too tired to finish watching the soccer final, said: “You should ask [Paul] who will win in Sinbei City.”
■NATIONAL DEFENSE
Bus crash kills one
A soldier was killed and 30 were injured on Sunday when a bus carrying 44 soldiers overturned on a freeway, police said. The man died at the scene, while those taken to hospital included four in critical condition, police said. The accident took place as the bus was carrying soldiers back from vacation in Taipei to their base in Guantian Township (官田), Tainan County. The driver said a technical fault caused the bus to veer out of control before it flipped over. The cause of the crash was under investigation.
■CULTURE
Choir performs in Italy
An Aboriginal youth choir from Hsinchu County captivated Italian churchgoers on Saturday at a church near the Vatican. The choir, composed of 25 Atayal elementary and junior-high school students, sang during a Catholic Mass, performing Hallelujah and several other hymns in both English and Atayal. After the service, the choir was invited to perform Atayal tribal music. The choir sang tribal melodies, played traditional musical instruments and performed folk dances. The choir, composed of Catholics and Christians, had visited Venice and several other cities before arriving in Rome, the last leg of its two-week visit to Italy.
■HISTORY
Presidential Office on film
A documentary on the Presidential Office building will be shown on the Discovery Channel next year to celebrate the Republic of China’s centenary, an official said on Sunday. The one-hour documentary will recount the story of the building, which has witnessed Taiwan’s development since 1919, the Government Information Office (GIO) said. “The film will help TV viewers around the world learn about the past, present and future of the historic building,” the official said. The building served as the office of Taiwan’s governor-general during Japanese colonial rule and has been Taiwan’s political nerve center since 1949. The Presidential Office’s Public Affairs Department is working closely with the Discovery Channel on production of the documentary, the official said. “We hope the film will give the world a clear, complete and accurate depiction of the building,” he said. To increase Taiwan’s international visibility, the GIO has collaborated with the Discovery and National Geographic channels in recent years to produce documentaries featuring outstanding Taiwanese from various professions. “This will be the first time that a documentary focuses on a historic building,” the official said.
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