MILITARY
TV to feature special forces
Special operations forces will be featured in a Discovery Channel program to be broadcast later this year, the result of the first cooperative project between the military and the global channel. The program will feature the rigorous training regimen that the army’s aviation special operations force, a naval underwater operation unit and combat frogmen face, the channel said in a recent statement. To film the program, the production crew traveled to the special forces training camp in Greater Taichung, a naval base in Greater Kaohsiung and, most recently, Kinmen, the channel said. Among the highlights of the coverage of the army frogmen’s arduous training in Kinmen were their long runs in cold weather and efforts to develop underwater combat capabilities in cold water, the statement said.
CULTURE
Drum festival in Tainan
Greater Tainan will kick off a six-day international drum festival on Feb. 11, so that visitors to the historic city can enjoy an art-filled Lunar New Year holiday, the organizer said yesterday. The festival, to be held at the Eternal Golden Castle, will feature seven percussion groups from Taiwan, the US, France, South Korea and Japan, the Greater Tainan Government’s Cultural Affairs Bureau said. “Listening to a percussion performance at the Eternal Golden Castle, which used to be a fortress, will give visitors an entirely different experience,” an official said. Taiwanese Grammy-nominated Ten Drum Art Percussion Group and Japanese drumming group Nobushi are among the groups scheduled to perform at the festival. The performances will begin each afternoon and last into the night, Chou said, adding that the seven groups will hold joint performances at the opening and closing ceremonies on Feb. 11 and 16 respectively.
EARTHQUAKE
Quake strikes east of Yilan
A magnitude 5.5 earthquake jolted the northeast early yesterday, but there were no reports of casualties or damage, the Central Weather Bureau said. The earthquake, which hit at 3:09am, centered off the notheastern coast 80.6km east of Yilan County Hall at a depth of 105.6km beneath the seabed, the bureau’s Seismology Center said. The strongest tremor, with an intensity of 3, was felt in the county’s Nanao Township (南澳) and neighboring Hualien County’s Heping Township (和平). The quake was felt at an intensity of 2 in Taipei and several other areas. The nation sits in an earthquake-prone area. More than 30 earthquakes rocked the nation in June last year alone, but none of them caused major damage.
WEATHER
Mercury to drop tomorrow
The current mild weather across the country is expected to last until tomorrow, after which a southward moving cold air mass from China will drive temperatures down again, the Central Weather Bureau said yesterday. Sunny weather with some clouds prevailed across the nation yesterday, with highs of 24°C to 25°C, the bureau said. Today and tomorrow, stronger seasonal winds are likely to bring the daily highs down to 20°C in the north and 23°C in central Taiwan, the bureau forecast. Occasional showers are expected in the north and east, it said. From Thursday to Sunday, temperatures are expected to drop in areas north of central Taiwan as a cold air mass from China moves in, the bureau said. It forecast lows of 13°C to 14°C in those areas and highs of 17°C to 18°C. Northern and eastern Taiwan can expect occasional showers during that period, the bureau 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