SOCIETY
Mandarin contest held
About 100 contestants from 30 countries participated yesterday in a Mandarin speech contest in Taipei. Now in its ninth year, the contest required participants to share a short story from Chinese history to help them discover local culture in a more interesting way, the organizers said. Mark Blohm, a 30-year-old from Boston, Massachusetts, demonstrated martial arts during his speech about Yue Fei (岳飛) from the Southern Song Dynasty, who is known for his martial arts skills. Cleisha-Bernise Una Springer from Saint Lucia sang during her fluent presentation of a story about Li Bai (李白), one of the most famous poets in Chinese history. A total of 20 contestants were selected to vie for a top prize of NT$60,000 (US$2,000) in a contest scheduled for May 19.
AGRICULTURE
Illegal pig feed found
Prosecutors in Pingtung County on Saturday found that eight feed dealers and pig farmers in the county and in Greater Kaohsiung have been selling and using pig feed containing illegal additives. The investigators seized 23kg of antipyretic and analgesic active pharmaceutical ingredients, along with more than 800kg of unlabeled additives, the Bureau of Animal and Plant Health Inspection and Quarantine said. Since an amendment to the Veterinary Drugs Control Act (動物用藥品管理辦法) was promulgated on Jan. 23, the penalties for the production, import or use of illegal animal drugs have been increased. Under the amendment, livestock farmers who use illicit drugs can be fined between NT$60,000 and NT$300,000, while repeat offenders can be fined between NT$500,000 and NT$2.5 million. Under the amendment, those guilty of manufacturing or importing and selling forbidden veterinary drugs can be sentenced to up to seven years in prison, or life in prison if the offense results in the death of a person.
ENTERTAINMENT
Films firms going to Cannes
Twenty-four Taiwanese film companies will attend this year’s Cannes Film Festival to promote Taiwanese films, the Taipei Film Commission said. A film guide that includes information about the companies, film projects and 95 feature films, short films, documentaries and animations will be available at the festival, which is to run from May 15 until May 26. One of the highlights at the festival this year will be the premiere of films under the Taipei Factory project, jointly launched by the commission and the festival’s Directors’ Fortnight, the commission said. Under the project, four directors from Iran, Chile, South Korea and France each collaborated with a Taiwanese director to write, shoot and edit a 15-minute film in Taiwan. The films will premiere on May 16 at the opening of the Fortnight section.
TOURISM
Chinese tourists injured
Eighteen tourists from China were slightly injured in Hualien yesterday when two tour buses were involved in a traffic incident in rainy conditions, police said. The injured were taken to two hospitals after the accident. They were all discharged and are expected to continue their tour. The incident happened when a tour bus carrying tourists from Chongqing rear-ended another bus with passengers from the northwestern Shaanxi Province on Provincial Highway 9, police said. The likely causes of the accident included a wet and slippery road surface, and failure of the following driver to maintain a safe distance from the vehicle in front, police added.
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