WEATHER
Cold spell lingering
As a cold spell sweeps across the nation, the Central Weather Bureau yesterday forecast that it was expecting to see the mercury plunge to lows of 7oC in northern and northeastern areas last night. The bureau said while areas north of Greater Tainan were to see temperatures plummet below 10oC late last night, the most severely affected areas were expected to be those exposed to the seasonal winds from the northeast — including Keelung, Taipei, Yilan and Hualien. The bureau said the cold blast is likely to remain until tomorrow morning. Meanwhile, the cold surge will be accompanied by less rain, which will reduce the chances of snowfall in mountainous areas, the bureau said.
SOCIETY
Brief marriage recognized
Authorities have decided to recognize a marriage that lasted only two days before the bridegroom died, resulting in the bride inheriting NT$2 million (US$68,000). The woman, identified by her family name, Chen (陳), married the 50-year-old man in his hospital room in Taipei last year just before he died of cancer, local media had reported. The man’s two grown-up children accused Chen of exploiting their terminally ill father and sued her for fraud, saying she sold his house after he died while trying to avoid them, the reports said. However, prosecutors decided to drop the charge against Chen after a household registration official, who validated the marriage, stated that the man was lucid and capable of making the decision to marry despite his illness, the reports said.
ENTERTAINMENT
Ceremony to laud pop stars
Pop singers from the -Chinese-speaking world will gather at an awards ceremony in Taipei in early April for the first Global Chinese Golden Chart gala. The Golden Chart was jointly launched by 11 Mandarin-speaking radio stations from Taiwan, China, Canada, the US, Singapore, Malaysia, Australia and New Zealand. The 11 radio stations have collected information on the top-selling popular songs on the charts on a weekly basis since 2009 and the results will establish the nominees for the 20 or more awards that will be handed out at Taipei Arena on April 9. The songs’ airplay and votes from Internet users and a panel of professional music critics will decide the winners, according to Hit FM, one of the organizers. Spencer Tsai (蔡詩萍), station director of Hit FM, said he hoped the event held in Taipei would showcase Taiwan’s soft power to the world, as Taiwan’s pop music has long been a driving force in Chinese--speaking music circles.
ENVIRONMENT
Firm to make eco-paper
A leading Taiwanese paper company expects to begin mass producing paper pulp made of rice and wheat stalks this year, local media reported yesterday. Yuen Foong Yu Group collaborated with Taiwanese universities to develop the biotechnology, according to firm chairman Ho Shou--chuan (何壽川). It is a cheaper and greener process because more paper pulp can be produced from rice stalks — a farming byproduct that is usually dumped — than from the same amount of lumber by weight. Ho said he hoped the new technology could replace existing chemical processes that are highly polluting and require a massive numbers of trees to be cut down. The new pulp-making technology would use energy more efficiently and produce much less carbon dioxide during manufacturing, he added.
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