■ SPORT
Wenshan center opens
President Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九) presided over the opening of a sports center in Taipei’s Wenshan District on Sunday and said he was delighted that each of the city’s 12 districts now had at least one multipurpose sports facility. “I am really happy that the plan, started by me with the building of the city’s first sports center in Zhongshan District, was completed by Mayor Hau [Lung-bin, 郝龍斌] with the dedication of the Wenshan Sports Center,” Ma said. The president, who is himself an enthusiastic jogger, said many people didn’t exercise because of the scarcity of exercise facilities in the city or because of the long distances they had to travel to get to such facilities. That is no longer the case in Taipei, he said. “It is the government’s job to provide people with exercise places that are easily accessible and affordable.”
■ ENTERTAINMENT
TV host breaks world record
Canadian TV host Bob Blumer broke the Guinness World Record by eating 134 grains of rice in three minutes using chopsticks yesterday in Taipei, the seventh world record he has set in various food related challenges. Blumer, host of the Food Network’s Glutton for Punishment, set the new world record on the final day of this year’s Taipei Culinary Exhibition. His three attempts at eating individual grains of rice with chopsticks all surpassed the previous world record — 78 grains of rice in three minutes — set nearly two years ago. “I am still hungry!” said an excited Blumer after eating 134 grains of rice during his second attempt. The previous record was set by Rob Beaton in November 2008 in the US, who picked up 23 grains of rice in one minute and 78 grains of rice in three minutes.
■ DIPLOMACY
Agriculture group helps Haiti
A Taiwanese agricultural mission stationed in Haiti is experimenting with a new rice variety in an effort to help the Caribbean nation increase its rice production. The French-language Le Nouvelliste, Haiti’s largest newspaper, covered the Taiwanese mission’s efforts on Aug. 14 and Aug. 15. According to the report, the new rice strain Prosequisa-4 (P-4) has been planted in the L’Artibonite valley plain, where most of the country’s rice is grown. However, production declined after an outbreak of crop disease in 1998, the report said. The Taiwanese agricultural mission then collaborated with the Haitian government to introduce the Taiwan-developed Taichung Shan No. 10 variety, which thrived. The report said average rice productivity in L’Artibonite is no more than 2.5 tonnes per hectare, however, the introduction of P-4 is expected to boost production to between 4 tonnes and 6 tonnes per hectare.
■ EDUCATION
Students victorious at PAMA
Two Taiwanese students won their respective categories at the 11th Pan Pacific Abacus and Mental Arithmetic Association (PAMA) Competition in Malaysia, association officials announced on Sunday. More than 400 contestants participated in the competition, which was held at the Genting International Convention Centre, divided into five categories according to age. “I was surprised to win because I did not start preparing for the competition until two months ago,” said Huang Kuang-chi (黃冠棋), who placed first in the over-14 group. Huang also won at the 2006 PAMA competition held in Hong Kong. Huang Jui-chieh (黃瑞傑), a two-time champion in 2006 and 2007, clinched this year’s title in the 11 to 13 age group.
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