WEATHER
Heavy rain forecast
A stationary front brought heavy rain to the Hengchun Peninsula (恆春半島) in Pingtung County early yesterday, resulting in flooding to a depth of 20cm in Heng-chun Township (恆春) within three hours, which blocked the northbound lane of Highway 26. The Central Weather Bureau issued torrential rain warnings for northeastern and western Taiwan, as well as parts of the south, adding that other areas are also likely to see showers or thunderstorms. The bureau said the front would continue to affect the nation’s weather through Tuesday. It said people should be alert to the danger of landslides, falling rocks and swollen rivers, as well as possible flooding in low-lying areas.
SOCIETY
Airport security tightened
Taiwan Taoyuan International Airport is to be equipped with electric fences to step up security following a series of perimeter intrusions. Airport authorities said that about 15km of electric fencing would be erected around the airport’s apron in stages, starting in November, to keep unauthorized people out of restricted areas. The announcement comes after three Thai workers were caught fishing on May 5 near a drain inside a restricted zone in the southern wing of the airport. The trio were detained by airport police for questioning and fined NT$5,000 each for violating the Civil Aviation Act (民用航空法). The investigators said the three were originally fishing in a stream outside the airport’s apron, but later crawled onto the airport grounds, where they felt the fishing would be better.
EDUCATION
Exhibition opens at NTU
An exhibition of rare specimens and artifacts held by National Taiwan University (NTU) and the University of Tokyo opened yesterday in Taipei to promote education and research, organizers said. The exhibition, titled “Extravagance: Out of Scale, Out of Norm, Out of Rule,” features about 50 specimens and replicas of rare insects, animals, plants and minerals. Items on display include a long-tailed Onagadori cock with a 4.7m-long tail, an egg and leg bone of what was once the world’s heaviest bird — the Aepyornis — the world’s heaviest insect, the world’s largest moth, precious coral specimens and a rare green sea turtle. Replicas of the world’s largest blue diamond and the world’s largest gold and platinum nuggets are also on display. The exhibition will run until Sept. 23 at the National Taiwan University Library.
POLITICS
DPP members sue police
Members of the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) filed lawsuits against the Taipei police yesterday for physical assault, a day after clashes between party protesters and police on Ketegalan Boulevard. The suits were filed with the Taipei District Court by DPP Greater Tainan Councilor Wang Ding-yu (王定宇) and DPP Taipei City Councilor Tung Chung-yen (童仲彥) against Taipei City Mayor Hau Lung-bin (郝龍斌) and Fang Yang-ning (方仰寧), head of the Zhongzheng First Police Precinct covering claims of physical assault, sexual harassment and offenses against personal liberty. Tung and Wang said although Wednesday’s gathering to petition the president was legal, the police had forcefully dispersed it. Fang said the police had asked the protesters on several occasions to apply for permission to assembly, but the group had not complied. Some protesters rammed into police, who were trying to maintain order, injuring several officers in the process, he 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