POLITICS
Lee released from hospital
Former president Lee Teng-hui (李登輝) was released from Taipei Veterans General Hospital yesterday, 18 days after he underwent a vertebral artery stenting procedure, Lee’s office said yesterday in a press release. Citing Lee’s medical team, office director Wang Yan-chun (王燕軍) said that Lee has almost fully recovered from a post-surgery fever and was released by the hospital even though the cause of the fever remains unknown.
ENVIRONMENT
Food security forum set
A forum featuring global food loss and security issues will take place in Taipei next month, part of efforts to achieve a sustainable environment, the organizers said yesterday. The three-day APEC seminar will cover reducing post-harvest losses, supporting food security, current challenges and other issues, the Taiwan Institute of Economic Research said in a statement. More than 120 experts from APEC members have been invited, the institute said. The event will take place from Monday to Wednesday next week. According to a report last month by the World Resources Institute and the UN Environment Programme, one out of every four calories produced by the global agricultural system is lost or wasted. The world will need about 60 percent more food calories in 2050 compared with 2006 if global demand continues on its current trajectory, the report said, noting that halving the current rates of food loss and waste would reduce this gap by 20 percent. This would also result in major savings in water use, energy, pesticides and fertilizers, and would be a boost for global food security, the report said.
CULTURE
Student wins music contest
Kao Han-yen (高瀚諺) won first prize at the 2013 Universal Marimba Competition and Festival in Belgium on Friday last week, the best performance to date by a Taiwanese at the event. The competition, which began on July 19, saw 70 marimba artists from 21 countries competing solo or as duos. Only three contestants made it to the final round — Kao and Hsieh Hsien-te (謝賢德) from Taiwan and Nina Fujisawa of Japan. Kao, a student at the Taipei National University of the Arts, not only claimed the first prize in the solo category, but also gathered the most audience votes, said Wu Pei-ching (吳珮菁), a member of the Ju Percussion Group and a member of the competition jury. No Taiwanese has ever claimed the top award, Wu said, adding that the previous best was Lin Chin-cheng (林金丞), who placed third in 2004. Kao, who is a member of Ju Percussion Group 2, said he was grateful for the teaching he has received from Wu and Ju group founder and artistic director Ju Tzong-ching (朱宗慶).
SOCIETY
Vietnamese found on boat
A Coast Guard Administration patrol based in Hsinchu County found 38 Vietnamese aboard a Chinese fishing boat that broke down in waters off northwestern Taiwan on Sunday night. The coastguard spotted the boat off Hsinchu’s Hsinfeng Township (新豐), Hsinchu Flotilla of the Maritime Patrol Directorate-General officials said yesterday. When the patrol approached the boat, it accelerated in an obvious attempt to flee, the officials said. After a short pursuit the boat stopped suddenly, the officials said. They said an inspection showed the boat’s main engine had broken down. A preliminary investigation has found that the Vietnamese were attempting to enter the country illegally, the officials 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
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