TOURISM
Taipei touts beef noodles
Home to most of the beef noodle shops in the country, the Taipei City Government has recently decided to promote the food as one of the city’s attractions, in addition to the Taipei 101 skyscraper and its clean and efficient mass rapid transport system. Beef noodles have been a part of Taipei’s culinary culture for many years. Taking advantage of the food’s special flavor, which attracts travelers from overseas, the city began in 2005 to organize an international beef noodle festival every year as part of efforts to boost tourism. According to city officials, the festival has triggered a trend among local gourmets to seek award-winning beef noodle restaurants in Taipei.
POLITICS
Yaung borrows for auction
Former health minister Yaung Chih-liang (楊志良) said yesterday he would participate in an online charity auction of a wooden replica of a briefcase he used when he was in government, but that he would have to borrow NT$1 million (US$33,450) to do so. The replica briefcase, made from camphor wood by sculptor Yang Pei-chen (楊北辰), had topped NT$600,000 as of yesterday in the auction to raise funds for disadvantaged people who need help to pay their health insurance premiums. To push up the bid, Yaung said he would borrow NT$1 million to take part in the auction on Yahoo Taiwan. The item was modeled on a leather briefcase Yaung used when he was health minister from 2009 to last year. The actual briefcase fetched more than NT$5 million in February last year after Yaung put it up for auction on the site. It was bought by Hon Hai Group chairman Terry Gou (郭台銘). The auction started on Monday and is expected to end on Thursday next week.
CRIME
Fake shirts go to needy
About 22,000 counterfeit sports shirts that were confiscated by Taichung prosecutors were donated to socially disadvantaged groups yesterday. Prosecutors confiscated the fake shirts — valued at about NT$40 million (US$1.33 million) — in an intellectual property rights violation case and the shirts would normally have been destroyed in accordance with regulations, the Taichung District Prosecutors’ Office said. However, given environmental concerns and the needs of socially disadvantaged people, the authorities decided it would be better if the clothing was donated to families in need, the office said. Prosecutors negotiated with the rightful manufacturers regarding intellectual property rights before the donation of the goods was approved, the office added.
TOURISM
B&Bs, hotels increasing
The number of registered bed and breakfast (B&B) establishments increased by 6.6 percent year-on-year as of April to reach 3,450, according to the Directorate-General of Budget, Accounting and Statistics. The number of rooms available at B&Bs totaled 13,718, up 6.7 percent from last year, according to the statistics compiled by the Tourism Bureau. Hualien County had the most B&Bs with 808, while Yilan County had 604 and Nantou County had 480. Together, the B&Bs in these three counties accounted for 55 percent of the B&Bs in the nation. Meanwhile, the number of tourist hotels increased from 105 last year to 107. The hotels had a total of 25,437 rooms, which were priced at an average rate of NT$3,433 per night. The occupancy rate was 68.2 percent, an increase of 1.6 percentage points from last year, and total revenue also increased by 10.9 percent, to NT$7.17 billion, over the same period.
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