SEA RESCUE
Ship sinks off Philippines
Four of five crewmembers working on a Taiwan--registered fishing boat were rescued as it sank off the northwest coast of the Philippines early yesterday. The Chen Fa Tsai’s Taiwanese skipper and first mate and two Indonesian crewmembers were rescued by another Taiwan--registered fishing boat at about 7am before the vessel sank, Taiwan’s representative office in Manila said. The ship’s other Indonesian crewmember remained missing, and Philippine coast guard officials were still searching for him, the office said early yesterday afternoon. The rescued crewmembers are now on their way back to Taiwan. The office said it first received notification from the Coast Guard Administration at about 11:50pm on Saturday.
ENVIRONMENT
Smartphones aid clean up
The Environmental Protection Administration (EPA) has developed a system for reporting dirty public places to the local government’s cleaning squads directly through smartphones. Using the GPS, photographic and Internet features of smartphones, the system allows members of the public to upload images of trash, pet excrement and other messy areas, with the location and time automatically recorded. The EPA said the system would focus on smartphones with the Android operating system, which currently has the largest market share in Taiwan.
FOOD & DRINK
Bubble tea ranked 25th
A poll by CNN travel Web site CNNGo.com of the top 50 drinks in the world has ranked Taiwanese bubble tea No. 25. The list, unveiled on Saturday, was topped by plain water, Coca-Cola and Ethiopian coffee. Bubble tea drew attention for its variety and the popular chewy “pearls” made of tapioca. “More bubble than tea, this is a tea-slash-milk-slash-fruit drink and its most famous variety includes chewy ‘pearls,’ resembling oversized frogspawn, at the bottom that you suck up with an oversized straw,” CNN said of the drink. “It sounds weird, but it has become a favorite drink snack among Asia’s millions of young shoppers.” Water was chosen as the No. 1 drink because “as the base of every other drink on this list, of every food in the world and indeed of all life, nothing beats a glass of pure, unsullied water for its thirst-quenching, revitalizing, life-giving properties.”
SOCIETY
Cross-strait tea final held
The final of an inaugural cross-strait tea competition took place in Chiayi yesterday, where some of the Taiwan’s best tea is grown. Based on the evaluation of five judges — two from China and three from Taiwan — Taiwan had the best showing in varieties of tea in final of the high-mountain tea category, which focuses on teas grown in areas at altitudes of more than 1,000m. However, Chinese varieties dominated the tieguanyin category. Tieguanyin is a type of Oolong tea. Organized by two tea associations from Alishan in Taiwan and Xiamen in China, the winter tea final came after two preliminary rounds were held in the two countries on Dec. 1. It also marked the first time that China-grown tea leaves have competed in Taiwan. The competition was part of Chiayi County’s efforts to promote Alishan tea in China, where it is already a popular Taiwanese product, the Chiayi County Government said.
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