CHARITY
Lottery winner donates
A lottery winner has donated NT$120 million (US$4 million) to charity groups around the country, Taiwan Lottery Co said yesterday. The NT$1.12 billion first prize was drawn in September and was the biggest lottery prize ever to go to a single winner in Taiwan. The winner was a housewife in her 30s from Taitung, said Taiwan Lottery chairman Steve Hsueh (薛香川). Charity groups in Taitung alone will receive donations totaling more than NT$30 million, he said. One of the charities, Star Home, which houses mentally challenged children, said the NT$20 million donation it received was its largest in recent years In addition, a red envelope containing NT$1.5 million was presented to the owner of the shop where the winning ticket was purchased. It is estimated that more than 56,000 underprivileged children and families in Taiwan will benefit from the donor’s generosity, Hsueh said.
MILITARY
Kinmen tunnel race thwarted
The military on Monday rejected a proposal to allow one of its defense installations on Kinmen to be used as a venue for foot race during next year’s Republic of China centennial celebration. The Kinmen County Government suggested transforming the Central Tunnel that runs through Mount Taiwu, the highest mountain on the former frontline island, into a temporary sports venue. The venue would showcase Kinmen’s transition from a military outpost to a tourist destination, Kinmen County Education Bureau Director Lee Tzai-hang (李再杭) said, adding that it would symbolize Kinmen’s emergence from the shadow of war into the light of peace. However, Kinmen Defense Command Officer Wu Fu-kuo (吳福國) said the tunnel, part of an underground tunnel network, was still a key military installation that was not open to the public.
AVIATION
China Postal to start flights
China Postal Airlines has obtained official permission to launch direct cargo flights to Taiwan, with the first set for next Tuesday from Fuzhou to Taiwan Taoyuan International Airport, the Ministry of Transportation and Communications said yesterday. The Beijing-headquartered carrier is also planning to operate a Nanjing-Taoyuan route, according to Taiwan’s Chunghwa Post, which will consign some of the company’s cross-strait mail to the airline. China Postal Airlines was established in 1996 and is the first Chinese carrier dedicated to express mail and cargo transport services. The company is one of the five Chinese carriers designated by Beijing to operate cross-strait cargo services.
CULTURE
Hakka program premieres
The rich diversity of the nation’s Hakka culture will reach a broader audience in Asia when a travel program featuring Hakka festivals premieres on Sunday in the Asia-Pacific region, a global lifestyle channel announced yesterday. In collaboration with the Council for Hakka Affairs, the Travel and Living Channel (TLC) said at a press conference that it would add a new episode called “Hakka Festivals” to its Fun Taiwan series, in which four distinctive Hakka festivals will be introduced for the first time on the channel. Running for about an hour, the show will reach more than 133 million viewers in 20 countries around Asia, said Tommy Lin, senior vice president and general manager of North Asia, Discovery Networks Asia-Pacific.
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