WEATHER
Storm bringing rain
Tropical Storm Krosa, which formed near the Philippines early yesterday, is expected to bring rain to the north and east of the nation today, the Central Weather Bureau said yesterday. As of 8am, Krosa was centered about 1,160km east-southeast of Oluanpi (鵝鑾鼻), moving west at 24kph. It is packing maximum sustained winds of 72kph, gusting to 101kph, the bureau said. Krosa is not likely to affect Taiwan directly, but may cause high waves along coastal areas and unstable weather nationwide until tomorrow, it said. Limited showers are likely in the north and east of the country over the weekend, the bureau said.
CRIME
Feces-slingers sought
Taipei police said they have identified a possible suspect involved in Monday’s attack by two scooter-riding feces-flingers on singer Jam Hsiao (蕭敬騰). Police said they tracked the license plate of the scooter used in the incident to a 22-year-old man whose whereabouts are currently unknown. The police said they have asked the man’s father to contact him and convince him to come forward. Hsiao narrowly escaped the attack outside of his home when two suspects hurled excrement into his car as he was on his way to work. The excrement missed Hsiao, but his driver and other passengers were not so lucky. The driver also sustained injuries when he attempted to stop the poo-slingers.
SOCIETY
Power lines removed
Construction workers on Tuesday removed several power lines to ensure better views for visitors to Dutch conceptual artist Florentijn Hofman’s Rubber Duck in Taoyuan County. Five cables that were preventing people from enjoying an unobstructed front view of the inflatable art installation were brought down and laid in ditches, according to the Taoyuan County Cultural Affairs Bureau. Three remaining cables have been left where they are because they do not affect photograph opportunities, the bureau said. The sculpture went on display on Saturday as part of a landscape art festival in the county, and had attracted an estimated 930,000 visitors as of Tuesday.
TOURISM
Peru seeking more visitors
Peru is hoping to see 4,000 visitors from Taiwan by the end of this year as a result of burgeoning economic and cultural ties, Commercial Office of Peru in Taipei Director Gycs Gordon said yesterday. “Taiwan is one of the fastest-growing markets for us,” Gordon said, adding that the number of Taiwanese visiting his nation has been growing by 20 percent annually. Gordon said Peru hopes 10,000 tourists from Taiwan will visit by the end of 2016 following a series of promotional events hosted by the Peruvian Commission for the Promotion of Exports, which launched its first road show in Taiwan yesterday. Commission members will be meeting with Taiwanese travel agents through trade fairs and business-to-business events during their stay.
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