■ HEALTH
Taiwan not in Abbott recall
Department of Health officials yesterday said the brand of Abbott Laboratories powdered infant formula that the company has reported as contaminated is not imported into Taiwan. Abbott launched a voluntary mass recall of 5 million cans of its Similac brand powdered infant formula on Wednesday, saying it might be contaminated by insects, which could induce stomach pains and harm the digestive system. The Similac brand is distributed in the US, Puerto Rico, Guam and certain Caribbean countries, but it has not been found in this country, the Food and Drug Administration said yesterday. However, officials said that the agency would continue to investigate and seek more details from Abbott.
■ CULTURE
China to borrow painting
The National Taiwan Museum plans to loan a treasured painting to China, the first such exchange with China, officials said yesterday. Previous Chinese requests to borrow nationally important cultural relics have been rejected because the government feared the works might be confiscated. The National Taiwan Museum said it plans to loan a 17th-century portrait of the Ming Dynasty general Koxinga (國姓爺) — also known as Cheng Cheng-kung (鄭成功) and other art treasures to the Hubei Provincial Museum and another museum in Fujian Province for exhibitions next year. “We support the government’s policy of promoting cultural exchanges with the mainland,” said Li Tzu-ning (李子寧), an official at the National Taiwan Museum. In return, the Hubei museum will loan more than 100 items to the National Taiwan Museum for an exhibition scheduled for November, Li said. The National Palace Museum has said it was unlikely to loan its items to China in the absence of guarantees they would not be retained.
■ SOCIETY
Plagiarist stripped of award
A man who won a poster design competition to promote copyright protection has been stripped of his prize after he was exposed as a copycat, officials said yesterday. The man, identified only by his surname, Wu (吳), apologized and admitted that his design was copied from a work by Dutch artist Dennis Sibeijn featuring a paper plane and, ironically, titled Truth. Wu was ordered to return the NT$50,000 prize he won in the contest last year when he was a university student. His deception was discovered after a commuter recognized Sibeijn’s work on a billboard of Wu’s design in a Taipei subway station and reported it to the Intellectual Property Office. The posters have now been removed from all subway stations, but officials warned that if Sibeijn files a lawsuit against Wu, he could face a jail term of up to three years or a fine of NT$750,000.
■ JUDICIARY
Delegation visits Canada
A 10-member delegation from the Taiwan High Court visited the Ontario Superior Court of Justice on Wednesday in an effort to gain an understanding of the Canadian judicial system. Chief Justice Heather Forster Smith briefed the delegation on her court’s duties and functions. The delegation, led by Taiwan High Court Chief Justice Kuo Ya-mei (郭雅美), also held discussions with two judges Randall Echlin and Geoffrey Morawetz on the differences in the two countries’ court systems, commercial laws, bankruptcy laws and arbitration systems. Kuo said the discussions were meaningful and helpful. “What we learned during the visit could be a useful reference for judicial reforms in the future,” she said. The delegation will visit other Canadian judicial institutions until Tuesday.
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