SPORTS
Kevin Lin recovering
Endurance runner Kevin Lin (林義傑), who has been running the length of the ancient Silk Road since April, has almost recovered from suspected food poisoning after receiving medical attention in Iran, expedition organizers said yesterday. “Lin is now stable,” said a spokesman for The Home Expedition, the Taipei-based organization that organizes the historic Running the Silk Road program as part of its efforts to promote global sustainability. Because the team leader felt that Lin and two other runners needed more rest, they did not start their daily run at 6am as scheduled, the spokesman said, adding that all the runners were resting and recuperating. Local media reports said Lin and his two teammates — Bai Bin (白斌) and Chen Jun (陳軍) of China — fell ill the previous day when they were running through an Iranian village about 250km east of the Caspian Sea. An investigation into the cause of the food poisoning is ongoing.
LEISURE
Roller coaster stuck again
A roller-coaster ride in the E-Da Theme Park in Greater Kaohsiung broke down on Monday afternoon, leaving 24 riders stranded in mid-air for 10 minutes, a park official said. No injuries were reported, said a spokesman for E-United Group, the theme park’s parent company. A coin carried by one of the riders fell onto the track and sensors recording the presence of a foreign object immediately shut the ride down, but the problem was resolved after a technician removed the coin, the spokesman said. Images of the breakdown on cable TV news showed a car that was going up and down the halfpipe-shaped ride getting stuck about halfway up. The apex of the ride is 60m above ground. People trapped on the ride were treated to a free afternoon tea and also had their admission fees refunded as compensation, the spokesman said.
CHARITY
Ex-Singapore minister visits
Former Singaporean foreign minister George Yeo (楊榮文) left for Taiwan on Monday for a private visit to the Buddhist Compassion Relief Tzu Chi Foundation, Taiwan’s largest charity organization. Yeo will visit the Hualien-based charity to offer his gratitude and thanks in person to the Tzu Chi Stem Cell Center for saving the life of his son, a leukemia patient, by helping him get a bone marrow transplant, Yeo said on his Facebook page before leaving Singapore. Singapore media have been speculating that Yeo will throw his hat into the ring for the city state’s next presidential election. Yeo’s supporters have been urging him to run since he resigned as foreign minister after losing in Singapore’s general election on May 8.
CULTURE
Taipei choir bags gold award
The Taipei Male Choir took a gold award on Sunday in the Harmonie Festival, one of the world’s largest music festivals, which is held every six years in Limburg, Germany. It was the first time the Taipei Male Choir, founded in 1994, had competed in the Harmonie Festival for singing and music performance for young mixed choirs, female choirs, male choirs, folksong choirs and dance groups. Six groups from the US, Germany, the Netherlands, Sweden and Taiwan were in the running for the male choir competition. The choir of the University of Louisville in the US also won a gold award, while Sweden’s Stockholm Musikgymnasium took silver. Taipei Male Choir conductor Nieh Yen-hsiang (聶焱庠) said the chorus was composed of college students, as well as young and middle-aged people who have regular jobs.
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