HEALTH
Steak offered to donors
People who donated blood yesterday and today will receive discount coupons for a local steakhouse chain as part of a drive to alleviate a blood shortage, the Taiwan Blood Services Foundation said yesterday. About 16,000 coupons will be distributed to blood donors at 50 designated stations nationwide, entitling them to a 50 percent discount at Tasty Steakhouse, the foundation said. This is the fourth year that the steakhouse is collaborating with the foundation to help boost blood donations. Because of the cold weather, fewer people have been willing to go outside, which has affected blood donations, the foundation said. The organizers are hoping to collect a total of 8,000 liters of blood in the drive.
TRANSPORTATION
Suhua contract awarded
The first contract on the Suhua Highway improvement project was awarded on Wednesday to Lien Jung Engineering Co of Yilan, which edged out seven contenders with a bid of NT$970 million (US$32.9 million). The construction of a 1,834m bridge over Heping River (和平溪) along the border of Yilan and Hualien counties in the east has been listed as a project priority. The awarding of the first contract “shows our determination to carry out our promise of fixing the road,” Director-General of Highways Lee Chung-chang (李忠璋) said. A groundbreaking ceremony will be held before the Lunar New Year and the bridge is expected to be completed in 38 months, the Directorate-General of Highways said. Premier Wu Den-yih (吳敦義) promised in November that the government would complete the 38.4km project no later than 2017. Renovation of the highway gained urgency after torrential rains from Typhoon Megi last October triggered massive landslides that killed 26 people.
TRADE
Atemoya to be labeled
Exports of atemoyas will soon carry the “GAP” (Good Agriculture Practice) label to make them more easily distinguishable from other brands, the Council of Agriculture said. Last year, 99 percent of the nation’s exports of the fruit — a pineapple-flavored custard apple — went to China, Agriculture and Food Agency Deputy Director-General Yu Sheng-feng (游勝鋒) said. The GAP logo, which denotes good quality and food safety, will help Chinese customers distinguish the fruit from lower quality Chinese-grown produce, Yu said. Atemoyas are grown mainly in Taitung, on a total acreage of 2,200 hectares, with a yield of 24,500 tonnes per year, Yu said.
SOCIETY
Photographer honored
Photographer Chang Chao-tang (張照堂), who has spent more than four decades capturing images of people and places in Taiwan, received the country’s highest honor awarded to artists in Taipei on Wednesday. Chang urged the government to set up a museum of photography to help preserve the work of photojournalists and photographers and make the nation’s collective memory more accessible to the public. The National Cultural Awards, established in 1981 and distributed annually, are the oldest and the only government-organized honor that recognizes the lifetime achievements of artists from different fields. Recipients also receive NT$1 million (US$34,400). Chang, 67, is the second photographer to be given the award since 1987, when Lang Ching-shan (郎靜山) won it. Chang’s work has been exhibited in Tokyo, Paris, New York, Hong Kong, Seoul and several Chinese cities since the 1980s.
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