SOCIETY
Swiss office on charity drive
The Trade Office of Swiss Industries in Taipei has launched an online painting auction, with the proceeds to be donated to local charities, the office said yesterday. “This is another milestone in the fostering of good ties between Switzerland and the Taiwanese people,” said Jost Feer, the office’s director. The Swiss trade office organized a drawing competition last year for the first time and received more than 2,400 entries from elementary-school students, Feer said. In collaboration with a gallery in Taipei, the office selected the 88 most artistic paintings, based on age, style and creativity, to be auctioned. All the proceeds will be donated to two children’s charities — the St Raphael Opportunity Center in Tainan and the Star Home for People with Disability in Taitung. Interested bidders can visit www.aircamel.com.tw/star/bid/18/index.php.
ART
Taipei unveils application
The Taipei City Government yesterday unveiled its application to be the 2016 World Design Capital (WDC) after it budgeted NT$392 million (US$13 million) to compete. The application, sent to the WDC organizers on April 30 under the theme “Adaptive City,” was designed in the form of five-volume scrolls put together using the traditional binding skill known as “dragon-scale mounting.” Designer of the application Chen Jun-liang (陳俊良) said the cover pages of the five-volume scrolls contained calligraphy by Tong Yang-tze (董陽孜), paintings by illustrator Jimmy Liao (幾米) and scenic photographs representing the beauty of Taipei. A seven-minute promotional video shows artists and members of cultural industries, including choreographer Lin Hwai-min (林懷民) and sculptor Ju Ming (朱銘), discussing the city’s ever-changing and adaptive elements.
Staff writer, with CNA
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