CRIME
Tourist tries public suicide
A Chinese tourist was rushed to a hospital yesterday after he tried to commit suicide in front of the Presidential Office building, police said. The 35-year-old man stood on Ketagalan Boulevard, produced a knife and started stabbing himself in the head, shouting: “I want to die,” police said.
The man, surnamed Chen (陳), was visiting Taipei with a tour group, the authorities said after conducting their initial investigation. His motive, mental health status and other details were not immediately available.
ENTERTAINMENT
Chinese film rising: Ang Lee
Oscar-winning director Ang Lee (李安) yesterday said that Chinese-language cinema could earn more revenue than Hollywood in 10 years’ time, without broadening its appeal. Lee made the remarks ahead of the Golden Horse Film Awards. The 50th edition of the annual awards ceremony is to take place on Nov. 23 in Taipei. “I think in 10 years’ time, maybe our market will be bigger than the Hollywood market. Things will come naturally,” said the Taiwanese director, who will chair the jury for this year’s festival. “It’s important that we keep doing it. It will have ups and downs, but eventually it will pay back.” Industry analysts have predicted that China — which collected an estimated US$2.8 billion in box office earnings last year, compared with Hollywood’s US$10.8 billion — will become the world’s dominant film market by 2020, if its current rate of growth is sustained.
ENTERTAINMENT
Locals win animation prize
A film by young Taiwanese animators won the best animation award at the New York Los Angeles (NYLA) International Film Festival last month, Ling Tung University, their alma mater, said on Monday. It was the first time that an animation by Taiwanese students won the best animation award at the festival, according to the university. The short animation, titled Blessing (庇主), was the graduation project of Chen Wei-jhih (陳威志), Chuang Tsai-jung (莊采融), Lin Chih-ju (林芝如) and Huang Shuo-ping (黃碩平). It was inspired by a traditional boat-burning festival held to expel plague demons. The 3D animation, which took the foursome one-and-a-half years of university to complete, is about a young boy who has the power to decide the fate of his village. The festival is a biannual event that takes place in New York and Los Angeles.
HEALTH
Contact lenses on the rise
The nation’s contact lens market grew over the first nine months of the year, spurred by the improving quality of eye care providers and a more discerning public, market research firm GfK Group said. Taiwanese consumers have spent US$127 million on contact lenses so far this year up to September, the firm said. The increased efforts on behalf of optometrists and lens manufacturers to educate the public about eye care and what the latest technology can do to solve vision problems have greatly increased consumer awareness of the eyewear options available to them, the firm said. South Korea, Hong Kong, Malaysia and Singapore also saw growth in their respective contact lens markets, with Malaysia registering the biggest increase at 15 percent. Also driving the growth is a shift in consumer mentality, as people become less price conscious and shift toward the more expensive toric and silicone hydrogel lenses, GfK Group 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
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