CULTURE
Olympic photo exhibit opens
An exhibition featuring more than 100 press photographs from the Olympic Games by Central News Agency and Agence France-Presse will open tomorrow at Taipei 101 to celebrate the upcoming London 2012 Olympics, the organizers said yesterday. The exhibition to be held on the tower’s observation deck on the 89th floor will feature photographs taken from the first modern Games in Greece in 1896 and the 29th Summer Olympic Games in Beijing in 2008. Visitors to the exhibition will be able to view photographs of world famous athletes, including former world heavyweight boxing champion Muhammad Ali, and sprinter Michael Johnson, who won four Olympic gold medals and eight world championships. Photographs of Chen Shih-hsin (陳詩欣), the first Taiwanese athlete to win a gold medal at the Olympics, will also be displayed. The exhibition will run until July 20.
CULTURE
Venues offer free admission
A total of 22 museums and cultural venues in Taipei are offering free admission this weekend as part of a promotion of the city’s plan to apply to be designated World Design Capital (WDC) in 2016. The venues, including the Taipei Fine Arts Museum, the Museum of Contemporary Art, the Taipei 228 Memorial Museum and the Puppetry Art Center of Taipei, are free today and tomorrow. More than 34 designer stores and coffee shops around the city will also offer discounts or welcome gifts to visitors who check in and post “I support Taipei for WDC. Cheers!” on Facebook. Taipei City’s Department of Cultural Affairs Commissioner Liu Wei-gong (劉維公) said the city government has established a task force to apply for the WDC designation. For more information, visit www.taipeidesign.org.tw/enjoydesign
DIPLOMACY
AIT Kaohsiung to relocate
The new landmark China Steel Building was selected as the site for the relocated American Institute in Taiwan (AIT) Kaohsiung Branch Office, AIT Director William Stanton and China Steel Corp chairman Tsou Juo-chi (鄒若齊) jointly announced yesterday. The AIT’s major relocation project demonstrates the US’ deep commitment to southern Taiwan, the AIT said in a press release. The Kaohsiung Branch Office of AIT was established in 1979, the AIT said. The AIT decided to move its Kaohsiung Branch Office, which has been in its current site since 1986, into the China Steel Building to meet its expanded requirements and to ensure that it is positioned to maintain vibrant ties with southern Taiwan, the AIT said. The number of AIT staff at the branch has doubled since 1986.
CRIME
Gary Wang gets 20 days
Former Eastern Multimedia Group chairman Gary Wang (王令麟), the oldest son of fugitive Rebar Asia Pacific Group founder Wang You-theng (王又曾), yesterday reported to Taipei prosecutors to serve a 20-day prison sentence for two forgery cases related to the 2007 Rebar Asia Pacific Group embezzlement scandal. Gary Wang was found guilty of two charges of forgery by the Taiwan High Court in November last year and was sentenced to one year in prison. Prosecutors said that because Gary Wang was detained for 346 days while under investigation, he would have to serve only 20 days in prison. Gary Wang yesterday apologized for the damage done to the public by the Rebar case before he entered prison.
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