■ DIPLOMACY
Students tour Nicaragua
A seven-member delegation from Tamkang University is visiting Nicaragua to promote Taiwanese culture, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs (MOFA) said yesterday. Associate professor of Spanish Tseng Mao-chuan (曾茂川) is leading a group of six students from the Graduate Institute of Latin American Studies, who will introduce Mandarin and Taiwanese folk art, martial arts and traditional cuisine to senior high and university students. A welcome ceremony for the delegation was held at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs on Monday, and was attended by Ambassador to Nicaragua Wu Chin-mu (吳進木) and senior Nicaraguan officials. Wu said the youth program would help strengthen cultural exchanges between the two countries.
■ SOCIETY
Government addresses bug
With hundreds of households already receiving exorbitant electricity bills as a result of Taiwan’s “centenary bug,” the government yesterday said that about 10 percent of its agencies still required software updates to deal with a computer glitch that could crop up as the Republic of China’s 100th founding anniversary approaches. According to a recent survey by the Directorate-General of Budget, Accounting and Statistics (DGBAS), 90.47 percent of the 3,494 government agencies around the country have had the relevant software updates, 8.99 percent are currently in the process of updating and 0.54 percent have not yet started to update. The “centenary bug,” caused by the changeover on government systems from year 99 to 100, was responsible for the astronomical electricity bills generated recently by the computers of the state-owned Taiwan Power Co (Taipower).
■ DANCE
Tap festival draws on US
The Taipei Tap Festival, which will be held next month in Taipei and Kaohsiung, will feature award-winning dancers from the US and Japan, the organizers said yesterday. The organizers of the festival, which is now in its sixth year, have invited award-winning US dancers such as Derick Grant, Jason Samuels Smith and Chloe Arnold as well as Japanese dancer Yukiko Smilie Misumi to perform in Taiwan. Smith is a multi-talented tap dancer who won last year’s Dance Magazine Award, an Emmy and American Choreography Award and many other honors. Arnold, founder of the DC Tap Festival and Co-Director of the LA Tap Festival, will work with a local children’s dance group to present a new piece at the 10-day event, Yeh said.
■ TRANSPORTATION
TRA opens solar station
The Taiwan Railway Administration (TRA) will open its first solar-powered station today in the Southern Taiwan Science Park in Tainan County. Nanke Station was first set up as a temporary station for visitors to the 2008 Taiwan Lantern Festival at the science park. The county government later negotiated with the TRA to build a permanent station — the first TRA station built by a local government, the TRA said yesterday. Tainan County Councilor Su Huan-chih (蘇煥智) asked for a solar power system to be installed at the station to help boost the solar industry in the county. The county government has a community development project nearby called “Solar City” that plans to build housing units with solar power systems. Architect Lu Li-chun (呂理群), whose firm oversaw the design and construction of the station, said solar panels were placed on the roof of the station and over the platform.
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