MILITARY
Four critical after accident
Four of the seven people injured in an explosion at a military arsenal in Yuanshan Township (員山), Yilan County, on Friday are on life support, the Tri--Service General Hospital said yesterday. The four patients have been on extracorporeal membrane oxygenation (ECMO) as a result of heart and lung damage or unstable breathing since Friday night, a statement issued by the hospital said. ECMO is like a heart-lung machine that provides both cardiac and respiratory support to patients. Dialysis treatment was also performed on five of the seven patients after symptoms of kidney failure and rhabdomyolysis were detected, the hospital said. Eight people were injured in the blast, seven of whom suffered burns covering 50 percent to 99 percent of their bodies. The other injured person sustained minor burns.
ASTRONOMY
Jupiter closest to Earth
Stargazers had a chance to see the planet Jupiter at its brightest yesterday as it moved closer to Earth, the Taipei Astronomical Museum said. The opposition of Jupiter, which occurs when the Earth is between the sun and the largest planet within the solar system, offers the best view of Jupiter until 2022, the museum said. Although an opposition occurs every 13 months, Jupiter’s orbit reaches its closest point to the sun this year, which makes observation of the planet from Earth much easier, the museum said. There was a good chance that members of the public would be able to identify Jupiter at night because it would be the brightest spot in the eastern sky, museum assistant researcher Chang Kuei-lan (張桂蘭) said.
HEALTH
Film promotes screening
A film on 500 breast cancer survivors promoting the importance of mammograms and early detection will be shown today at Taipei City Hall plaza to mark breast cancer awareness month. The 30-minute film documents about 600 awareness--raising activities the survivors organized between 2009 and this year, said Lin Wei-chieh (林葳婕), secretary-general of the Taiwan Breast Cancer Alliance, the event’s organizer. “These women traveled to the suburbs and countryside to share their own experiences with those who have little access to such information,” she said. However, Lin, a breast cancer survivor, said that more work needs to be done to raise public understanding oabout the disease. Health specialists will be onsite to give advice and a roving mammography service will be available to give examinations to women who meet age and health insurance requirements, she said.
CULTURE
Cross-strait fair opens
The fourth Cross-Strait (Xiamen) Cultural Industries Fair opened in Xiamen, China, yesterday with 510 Taiwanese businesses taking part. About 1,000 Chinese businesses also took part in the fair, which will ends tomorrow. Taiwan, which is currently hosting the Taipei World Design Expo, has attended cultural creative exhibitions in China in recent years. Francis Chen (陳立恆), chairman of Asia-Pacific Cultural Creative Industry Association (CCIA), worked with the Xiamen Provincial Government to organize the fair. Chen, himself the president of Franz Collection Inc, said the number of Taiwanese participants has grown rapidly compared with the 195 companies that took part in the first year of the fair. The CCIA estimated that this year’s fair could create NT$12 billion (US$402.01 million) in business opportunities.
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