NATURE
Deep quake strikes off north
A magnitude 6.5 earthquake struck off the northern coast just before noon yesterday. There were no immediate reports of injuries or damage to buildings. The temblor was felt in most areas in the nation’s north, center and northeast, but its extreme depth limited the extent to which it was felt on the ground, Central Weather Bureau seismologists said. The quake, which occurred at 11:23am, was centered 141.4km east of Keelung City Hall at a depth of 221.4km, the bureau said. The earthquake had an intensity of 2 in Yilan City, Hualien City, Taoyuan County, Deji (德基) in Greater Taichung and Nantou County, and 1 in Taipei, Hsinchu City, Miaoli County, the rest of Greater Taichung and Taitung County, the bureau said.
DESIGN
Taiwan takes iENA medals
Taiwan bagged more than 80 medals on Saturday at the 63rd iENA Nuremberg in Germany, a leading global invention trade show where 750 inventions were on display. The Taiwanese delegation, comprised of students and older inventors, research institutes and private firms, won 26 gold, 45 silver and 11 bronze medals as well as an honorary prize. Chemical engineering inventions and home electronic appliances designed by Taiwanese entrants also won awards for their innovation and feasibility, Taiwan Prominent Inventors’ Association founder and former president Kao Fa-yu (高發育) said. Taiwan’s youngest winners were seventh-grader Kao Hsuan-chieh (高炫傑) and eighth-grader Chen Chi-ren (陳麒仁) from Keelung’s Erh Shing Private High School, whose invention was a kind of glass for the visually impaired that automatically measures a liquid’s level to prevent overflow. When the liquid in the glass reaches a default level, the glass beeps to warn the user.
SOCIETY
Arsenal blast victim dies
One of the eight people injured in an ordinance blast in Yilan County on Friday passed away after her family had her discharged from the hospital against medical advice, the hospital said. Lin Hsiu-mei (林秀鎂), sustained multiple organ failure and burns covering 90 percent of her body, according to the Tri-Service General Hospital in Taipei, where the blast victims were being treated. Lin was sent home to Jiaosi Township (礁溪), Yilan County, in an ambulance accompanied by an attendant and a physician on Friday evening after her family signed off on her release from the hospital’s intensive care ward, the hospital said.
FILM
‘Seediq Bale’ to open in NYC
The film Warriors of the Rainbow: Seediq Bale is set to open a film series dedicated to international distributor Fortissimo Films at the Museum of Modern Art in New York on Thursday next week. According to ARS Film Production, the movie’s local production company, director Wei Te-sheng (魏德聖) will attend the film’s screening to pave the way for its release in North America. Aside from the screening on the opening day, Seediq Bale will be screened again on Nov. 20 as part of the series “In Focus: Fortissimo Film,” being held to celebrate the distributor’s 20th anniversary. The New York screening will show the film’s abridged 150-minute version, but the full-length film, divided into two parts and lasting more than four hours, will start its official overseas release in Hong Kong, where the first part of the film, titled “Flags of the Sun,” is set to hit theaters on Nov. 17.
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