SOCIETY
Teng Yu-kun, 65, dies
Teng Yu-kun (鄧育昆), a renowned Taiwanese television producer and screenplay writer, fell to his death from his home in Shanghai yesterday, one of his wife’s former assistants confirmed. However, the former aide did not provide any details during a telephone interview on what might have caused Teng to fall from the building. Teng, 65, and his wife Liu Hsueh-hua (劉雪華), are both highly regarded in the TV and movie industry and in recent years, have developed successful careers in China.
CULTURE
Da-an orchestra impresses
The Taipei Municipal Da-an Junior High School String Orchestra emerged as one of the best groups at the Summa Cum Laude Competition in Vienna, Austria, on Sunday, earning the orchestra the opportunity to perform in Vienna’s Golden Hall today. The annual international youth music competition, hosted by the Viennese Music Association, is categorized into three groups — youth choirs, bands and orchestras. The winners of each category earn the right to perform at the Golden Hall — the concert hall for the Vienna Philharmonic Orchestra. Representative to Austria Chen Lien-gene (陳連軍) said 30 groups from 11 countries participated in the competition. The Da-an Junior High School Orchestra was competing for the first time in the event.
HEALTH
High aluminum levels found
The Consumers Foundation yesterday called for caution when buying waffles and pancakes, as well as salted dried jellyfish, as testing showed that only 4 percent of these products could be classified as “safe.” In light of a May 2009 report by the Center for Food Safety in Hong Kong that the weekly intake of aluminum should be no more than 0.6 milligrams per kilogram of body weight, the foundation did a series of spot checks, focusing first on salted jellyfish, waffles and pancakes. It said the checks would be expanded to cover other popular food items. The foundation said such food products often contain potassium alum or leavening agents and therefore excessive aluminum, a chemical which it said has a correlation with Alzheimer’s disease. The survey, conducted in March and April in Taipei and New Taipei City (新北市), found that the aluminum levels in 15 salted jellyfish samples it checked all exceeded 500 parts per million (ppm), while nine waffle and pancake items contained aluminum ranging between 100ppm and 500ppm. Of all the samples tested, only the waffles sold at the Starbucks coffee shop chain showed no presence of aluminum, the foundation said.
SPORT
Jason Hu visits China, Japan
Taichung Mayor Jason Hu (胡志強) will leave for China and Japan today to lobby for support for Greater Taichung’s bid to host the East Asian Games in 2017, city officials said yesterday. He will meet representatives of East Asian Games Association (EAGA) member countries during his trip, which will first take him to Beijing and Tianjin in China and then on to Tokyo, officials said. China’s support is considered critical because it is said to control four of the EAGA’s nine votes — those of China, Hong Kong, Macau and North Korea. The city’s plan to host the event revolves around energy saving and the reduction of carbon emissions, and Hu hopes it will carry enough weight to win support for Taichung’s bid. The EAGA is scheduled to hold a meeting of board members in Tokyo on Tuesday and Wednesday next week.
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