ENTERTAINMENT
Artist ranks first in Poland
Doris Yeh (葉湘怡), a member of the metal band Chthonic, has been ranked as the best female metal artist in the world by a Polish rock magazine in its latest edition, the only Asian musician on the list. Yeh said she did not know she was ranked No. 1 on the list until her Polish fans told her that miejsce 1 means “first place” in Polish. She said she was flattered, adding that Poland is one of the few European countries in which her band has not yet performed. “They taught me some Polish. Next time we are going to teach them Taiwanese when we give a concert there,” the bassist said. Among the top 15 females on the list are Angela Gossow of the Swedish band Arch Enemy, Maria Brink from In This Moment from the US, Simone Simons from the Dutch band Epica and Cristina Scabbia from Lacuna Coil of Italy. In addition to the Polish magazine, Yeh was ranked third on the list of the world’s most popular bassists by the Japanese rock magazine Burrn.
TRAFFIC
Chinese tourists injured
Twenty Chinese tourists were slightly injured in a traffic accident on the Alishan Highway yesterday, police said. The tourists from Shanghai sustained minor injuries when the tour bus in which they were traveling scraped against an oncoming gravel truck at the highway’s 69.2km mark, police said. They were all taken to a nearby medical station for examination and treatment, the police said. The group’s Taiwanese tour guide sustained a fractured ankle and was taken to hospital in Chiayi City for further treatment. The tour bus and gravel truck drivers were uninjured, the police said. The cause of the accident was being investigated, they said.
ASTRONOMY
Partial eclipse on Friday
Stargazers may be able to see a partial eclipse of the full moon on Friday — the only time this celestial event will be visible this year, the Taipei Astronomical Museum said. The partial lunar eclipse is expected to occur between 3:51am and 4:23am on Friday, when the sun, the Earth and the moon line up, it said. A slice of the moon will become relatively invisible, as the shadow of the Earth passes over it, and the part that remains lighted will make for dramatic viewing, the museum said. The last time a similar event occurred was on June 4 last year. Such a phenomenon will not be observable again until Oct. 8 next year, the museum said, adding that the partial lunar eclipse would be observable with the naked eye.
SOCIETY
Elderly care idea changing
Having children is no longer considered a guarantee that parents will be cared for in their senior years, a survey published on Sunday said. In the poll conducted by TransGlobe Life Insurance Inc, 84 percent of respondents said they do not expect their children to take care of them when they grow old. Among that group, more than 68 percent said children cannot shoulder such a responsibility because the economy is deteriorating. Almost 13 percent said self-reliance was the only way for seniors to maintain their dignity, while more than 8 percent said it was an outdated idea to rely on children to care for elderly parents. Multiple options were allowed in the poll. The survey showed that 39 percent of respondents have retirement plans, 21 percent have not taken any action in this regard and 35 percent have not yet thought about retirement. The other 5 percent said they are already retired. The survey collected 1,050 valid responses among people aged 29 to 70.
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
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
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