SOCIETY
Hu hails Taiwan Tower
Taiwan Tower will become the brightest spot in Greater Taichung, Taichung Mayor Jason Hu (胡志強) said yesterday, adding the structure would be “a spot bright enough for the whole world to see.” Speaking after a briefing by officials from the city’s Urban Development Department, Hu said the tower would be like the sun and the city’s many districts surrounding the tower would be like the planets. Japanese architect Sou Fujimoto will design the Taiwan Tower after his “21st Century Oasis” entry won first prize in the Taiwan Tower International Competition. Fujimoto’s entry was inspired by the intertwined trunk of the banyan tree and the shape of the country. It will be complemented by a museum and an exhibition space, as well as a green rooftop floating 300m above the city. Hu said the building’s revolutionary concept has attracted a lot of attention internationally. The tower is set to be completed in 2017 and has a budget of NT$6.59 billion (US$218.47 million).
SOCIETY
Maokong Gondola checked
The Taipei Rapid Transit Corp (TRTC) said on Sunday that the Maokong Gondola was set to undergo routine mechanical checkups from yesterday through Dec. 15. The company said the checkup was in compliance with the cable company POMA’s handbook, which specifies that an annual mechanical checkup of 11 days is needed to ensure passenger safety. The checkup will be completed in time for the system to accommodate the large crowds that are expected to use the system during Christmas, New Year’s Eve and the Lunar New Year holiday season, the officials said. Mechanics from POMA will provide on-site guidance to help the TRTC’s mechanics, the firm said.
CHARITY
Man donates 166 blood bags
Taiwanese businessman Chen Tse-jen (陳澤人) has donated 166 bags of blood since he moved to Shanghai in 2003, making him the top blood donor in the Chinese city, the Shanghai Morning Post said on Friday. The paper said that the total amount of blood he has donated is equivalent to 40 times that required for a full blood transfusion. Moreover, the paper reported, on Thursday, Chen donated his 200th bag of platelets — blood cells that help control bleeding — in China. Including donations made in Taiwan, Chen has given a total of 615 bags of platelets. The 58-year-old Chen said that visits to the hospital as a child made him realize the importance of blood donations. As a child he was very sick, Chen said, and he saw how a shortage of blood caused great anxiety among the families of patients. Besides helping others, Chen added, giving blood allowed him to check up on his health as well.
SOCIETY
Taiwan win disc medals
Taiwan grabbed a silver medal and a bronze on Sunday in the finals of a flying disc tournament in Greater Kaohsiung. The final of this year’s World Flying Disc Federation Asia Oceanic Ultimate Championships, which included an open division and a mixed division, took place at the city’s National Stadium. In the mixed division, Taiwan came third, defeating Singapore 16-8. However, in the open division, even though Taiwan scored the first point, the team could not stay consistent against a Japanese team, who took the gold medal with a final score of 17-9. Japan bagged gold in both the open and the mixed divisions. The competition was held from Thursday through Sunday with teams from nine countries.
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