RITUALS
Temple to ring in new year
Dharma Drum Mountain (DDM) Buddhist Temple will hold its annual bell-ringing event on Sunday, Lunar New Year’s Eve, a ritual that is supposed to help the country and its people bid farewell to unhappiness. The ringing of the bell at DDM’s monastery in Jinshan District (金山), New Taipei City (新北市), is scheduled to begin at 10pm on New Year’s Eve, temple authorities said. The monastery’s Fahua Bell will be rung 108 times to symbolize the passing of the 108 human sins in Buddhist belief. President Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九) will deliver the final strike to coincide with the beginning of the Year of the Dragon, temple officials said. It will be the fourth time the president will attend the event since he took office in 2008. The officials said people could also watch the ritual via a live Web cast on the temple’s Web site.
ART
Louvre pieces on loan
A rare collection of fresco wall paintings from the Louvre in Paris will be among 100 works from seven French museums that will go on display in Taipei from tomorrow to May 14, the National Palace Museum said yesterday. The exhibition, titled “Western Mythology and Legends: Selected Works from the Louvre Collection,” will feature ancient Greek pottery, frescoes from the ancient city of Pompeii, and paintings and sculptures from between the 16th and 19th century, museum officials said at a press conference. “It is the first time that the set of nine frescoes depicting Apollo and the Muses from Pompeii will be exhibited in Taiwan,” National Palace Museum director Chou Kung-shin (周功鑫) said. Also on display will be an 18th century painting of Mount Olympus by Francois Lemoyne and a red-figured cup by Greek potter Brygos, showing the capture of Troy.
INDUSTRY
Milk powder prices cut
Milk powder companies have decided to cut prices by between NT$10 and NT$20 per 1.5kg can, the Ministry of Economic Affairs said yesterday. However, ministry officials said additional promotions that will be launched by some of the companies next month would increase the savings to as much as NT$136 per can. The companies made the decision after reaching an agreement with the government to lower their prices to reflect a decrease in tariffs, the officials said. On Nov. 25 last year, the Ministry of Finance implemented the tariff reductions on three categories of milk, a response to soaring milk powder prices.
POLITICS
KMT nominates vice speaker
Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) Legislator Hung Hsiu-chu (洪秀柱) was chosen as the party’s nominee for the post of deputy legislative speaker after she won a straw poll held by KMT lawmakers yesterday. The eight-term lawmaker will pair up with Legislative Speaker Wang Jin-pyng (王金平) on a KMT ticket that is expected to win the posts in a legislative vote on Feb. 1, when the Eighth Legislature takes its oath of office. “It was probably because I was the most senior lawmaker,” Hung said. The KMT secured 64 seats out of 113 in the new legislature, the Democratic Progressive Party won 40 seats, the People First Party and the Taiwan Solidarity Union each gained three seats, the Non-partisan Solidarity Union obtained two seats and an independent lawmaker gained a seat.
CRIME
Foodstuffs trader indicted
A trader in Taipei was indicted yesterday for allegedly selling expired foodstuffs after altering the production dates on their labels, the Taipei District Prosecutors’ Office said. The prosecutors said they were seeking a four-year jail term for Shen Feng-ying (沈鳳英), who runs two trading companies, on charges of fraud and other crimes involving the sale and doctoring of expired imported foodstuffs for seven years. According to the indictment, Shen had since 2005 sold relabeled food products to bakeries and restaurants, concealing that the materials, including chocolate, cocoa, nut products, fruit jams and glucose syrup, had passed their expiry dates. Shen had also since 2009 resold outdated materials that she had adulterated, according to the indictment.
POLITICS
Cheng’s resignation approved
Taipei Mayor Hau Lung-bin (郝龍斌) yesterday approved the resignation of Taipei City Department of Cultural Affairs Commissioner Cheng Mei-hua (鄭美華) yesterday after she insisted on returning to Shih Chien University, Taipei City Government spokesman Chang Chi-chiang (張其強) said yesterday. Cheng took over as commissioner in August last year following the resignation of Hsieh Hsiao-yun (謝小醞) in July amid a dispute over an exhibition at the Taipei Fine Arts Museum. Her appointment sparked disputes over her qualifications, with Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) Taipei City Councilor Lee Ching-yuan (李慶元) showing documents that he said proved Hsieh was guilty of plagiarism, while also slamming Hau, accusing him of failing to conduct a solid background check before the appointment. Chang yesterday said she offered the resignation because she wanted to return to the university to keep her tenure.
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