WEATHER
Mercury to drop again
Temperatures around the nation could drop again starting on Friday due to the arrival of a cold air mass from China, the Central Weather Bureau forecast yesterday. The mercury could fall by about 2oC on Friday and Saturday, before rising on Sunday, when the cold air mass is expected to weaken, the bureau said. Day and night temperatures around the country may vary by up to 10oC, especially in the central and southern areas, from today until Dec. 9, it added. Daily highs during that period are expected to reach 23oC to 24oC in the north, northeast and east, while climbing to 26oC and 27oC in the central and southern regions, the bureau said.
TRAVEL
Bangkok travel alert issued
The government on Monday issued a yellow alert for travel to Bangkok and its surrounding areas, warning Taiwanese to reconsider visiting Thailand’s capital as anti-government protests continued. The Ministry of Foreign Affairs urged Taiwanese planning to visit Bangkok to be vigilant about their personal safety, ministry spokeswoman Anna Kao (高安) said at a regular news conference yesterday. A “gray” travel alert for Thailand has been in place since early last month, as anti-government protesters in the capital tried to storm Thai Prime Minister Yingluck Shinawatra’s office, demanding that she step down amid claims that her government is controlled by her elder brother, ousted former Thai prime minister Thaksin Shinawatra, foreign media reports said. Kao also urged citizens not to visit crowded areas in Bangkok and avoid wearing yellow and red shirts, which are the colors donned by the fighting political factions in Thailand.
POLITICS
Legislature votes on CEC
The Legislative Yuan yesterday voted to retain Central Election Commission (CEC) Chairperson Chang Po-ya (張博雅) and Vice Chairperson Liu Yi-chou (劉義周) in their posts, and approved four nominees to the commission. After legislators cast their ballots along party lines, Chang, 71, and Liu both won another four-year term by a margin of 65-42, with Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) lawmakers endorsing the Executive Yuan’s nominees and the opposition parties voting against them. The Democratic Progressive Party caucus said it voted against the nominations because President Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九) had used the commission as a political tool during the so-called “September strife” and because the candidates did not include representatives from the opposition.
ENTERTAINMENT
Barbie Hsu is pregnant
Actress and singer Barbie Hsu (徐熙媛) — also known as Big S — announced late on Monday that she and her husband are expecting a baby, confirming recent rumors that she is pregnant. Hsu’s statement sparked a media frenzy since she and her husband, Chinese entrepreneur Wang Xiaofei (汪小菲), are well-known in Taiwan and China, and because the high-profile couple have reportedly wanted a baby since tying the knot in 2011. Hsu, the elder sister of TV hostess Dee Hsu (徐熙娣, better known as Little S), married Wang in a lavish wedding in China. The 37-year-old actress became a household name in Taiwan in the 1990s as a member of the duo girl group S.O.S with Dee Hsu, but is best known for her subsequent role in the TV drama Meteor Garden (流星花園).
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