ENVIRONMENT
Fronts boost water stocks
The threat of water shortages in Greater Tainan has been alleviated at least temporarily thanks to several weather fronts last month that have filled southern Taiwan’s reservoir catchment areas, the South Region Water Resources Office said. Nanhua Reservoir (南化水庫), which provides most of Greater Tainan’s industrial and domestic water, is at 80 million tonnes, which is 83 percent of its total capacity. Meanwhile, in Chiayi the water levels at the Zengwun Reservoir (曾文水庫) and the Wushantou Reservoir (烏山頭水庫) have a combined total of 250 million tonnes, 45 percent of their total capacity. The Water Resouces Agency has color-coded the situation as “blue,” which represents normal water storage levels. Irrigation of the year’s second rice crop was scheduled to begin yesterday, which is expected to require approximately 400 tonnes of water in Greater Tainan and Chiayi.
CULTURE
Exhibit receives US award
An interactive art exhibit created by the National Palace Museum has won an award from the American Alliance of Museums, the museum said. Qianlong C.H.A.O. New Media Art Exhibition, a mix of historic artifacts with contemporary culture, has received a Silver Muse Award for interpretive interactive installations, the museum said. The interactive display combines items that belonged to the Qianlong emperor (乾隆, 1735 to 1799) with modern-day street culture, cosplay, DJs, anime, electronic music, avant-garde fashion and video games. The awards recognize outstanding achievement in museum media. The Qianlong exhibit also won a platinum award in April at the 47th WorldFest-Houston International Film and Video Festival, the third-oldest independent film festival in the US.
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