CULTURE
Festival offers taste of Africa
A three-day festival featuring African films, music and culture opened in Taipei yesterday in observance of Africa Day, which is celebrated annually on May 25 to mark the 1963 founding of the now disbanded Organization of African Unity. The Ministry of Foreign Affairs, which organized the event, said movies from 12 African countries, including Nigeria, South Africa, Tanzania and Gambia, will be screened during the festival. A series of free outdoor activities will also be held over the weekend at Huashan 1914 Creative Park, including a fair featuring booths run by the Africa Taiwan Economic Forum to showcase African culture, the ministry said. Visitors to the festival will have a chance to try African braiding, body painting and drumming, the ministry said. The ministry has been holding annual avents to raise public awareness of Africa and its diverse cultures.
TRAVEL
CAL to fly direct to Hawaii
China Airlines (CAL) said yesterday it will start direct flights from Taiwan to Hawaii on June 2, becoming the first Taiwanese airline to offer a non-stop service on the route. The move comes amid growing interest in travel to the US following Taiwan’s admission to the US Visa-Waiver Program in November last year, CAL said. From June 2, the airline will offer two direct Taipei-Honolulu flights weekly, in addition to its seven round-trip flights a week between Taiwan and Hawaii via Tokyo. The direct flights, using CAL’s Airbus A330s, will provide tourists and business travelers more options, the carrier said. The direct flights will be two hours quicker than those that go through Tokyo, CAL said, adding that it hopes to also attract Southeast Asian passengers who may wish to stop over in Taiwan en route to or from Hawaii.
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