CROSS-STRAIT TIES
Panda Cupid experts arrive
China has sent two experts to play Cupid this spring for a pair of young pandas it gave Taiwan in 2008, a zoo official said yesterday. Tuan Tuan (團團) and Yuan Yuan (圓圓) have both reached maturity this year, raising hopes that they will breed. Huang Yen (黃炎) and Zhou Ingming (周應敏), from the Wolong Giant Panda Reserve Centre in Sichuan Province, arrived in Taipei on Sunday to provide technical assistance. “The experts from the mainland are noted for their rich experience in the breeding of pandas,” Taipei Zoo director Jason Yeh (葉傑生) said, adding that there was a 50 percent chance that the pair would mate this year. If they fail to breed naturally, the zoo will consider using artificial insemination, Yeh said. He said the pandas have attracted more than 5 million visitors since their arrival.
TOURISM
HK, Macau arrivals increase
An initiative to simplify entry procedures for Hong Kong and Macau residents, launched on Sept. 1, has had a positive impact, the Mainland Affairs Council said on Sunday. Between Sept. 1 and Dec. 31, 208,342 people from the two Chinese territories obtained an entry permit online, 105.24 percent more than in the last four months of 2009, council statistics showed. Nearly 700,000 people from Hong Kong and Macau visited Taiwan last year, 10.5 percent more than in 2009, the council said. Noting that as of Jan. 11, Republic of China passport holders were granted visa waivers for 35 European countries, the council urged Hong Kong to grant Taiwanese a similar privilege. Hong Kong is one of the most popular overseas destinations for Taiwanese, the council said, with about 2.5 million visiting the territory each year.
EARTHQUAKE
Quakes rock Hualien
A magnitute 4.6 earthquake struck Hualien at 1:55pm yesterday, one of a series of nine quakes that began at 2:10am. Three of the quakes reached a magnitude of 3 or more. No casualties or damage were reported as of press time. The Central Weather Bureau’s Seismology Center said the epicenter of the magnitute 4.6 quake was located 16.5km northeast of Hualien County Hall at a depth of 15.9km. That quake measured magnitude 5 in Taroko Gorge, the center said, and was also felt by residents of Hualien’s Sioulin Township (秀林) and in Nanao Township (南澳), Yilan County, with an intensity of 4, and in Hualien City and Nantou County with an intensity of 3.
TRANSPORTATION
THSR helped holiday flow
The increasing use of the Taiwan High Speed Rail (THSR) and other forms of public transportation helped ease peak freeway traffic during the Lunar New Year holiday, the National Freeway Bureau said yesterday. Officials said the third day of the Lunar New Year usually has the heaviest traffic, with family outings reaching a peak while many people start returning to their homes in a bid to beat traffic jams on the final day of the holiday. On Saturday, which was the third day of the lunar year, the THSR transported about 190,000 passengers, 19 percent more than the same day during last year’s Lunar New Year, and an all-time high for its Lunar New Year passenger volume.
CULTURE
Go player honored
Taiwanese Go player Cho U (張栩) was given the title of Oza yesterday at a ceremony in Tokyo after winning three consecutive championships for the second time. The Japan-based Cho, 31, was presented with a certificate, a trophy and ¥14 million (US$163,000) in prize money.
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
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
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