TRADE
Innovation rewarded
Taiwan bagged 32 gold medals, 44 silvers and 10 special awards on Friday at the 29th Invention and New Product Exposition (INPEX) held from Wednesday to Friday in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. Taiwan’s 97 inventions were among nearly 700 inventions. By number of medals, Taiwan was the biggest winner for the third consecutive year. TCI Co’s sealwort abstract, a chemical that is expected to help balance androgenic hormones and ease manic depression, earned the Best Invention of the Far East award, a special prize of INPEX. Among the other Taiwanese winners is a technology that can separate gold from wasted electronic components without producing harmful chemicals. INPEX is the US’ largest invention trade show, which is held every year in Pittsburgh.
HEALTH
Third encephalitis case
The Centers for Disease Control announced yesterday the year’s third case of Japanese encephalitis. The other two were also confirmed this week. The patient is a 50-year-old man in Chiayi City, who remains in critical condition after being taken to hospital on Wednesday. He follows a 52-year-old man in Greater Taichung and a 46-year-old man in Greater Tainan. Among the 16 confirmed cases last year, 11 were identified in June, while 15 of the 32 cases in 2012 were also identified that month. The centers advise the public to get vaccinated and to avoid mosquito bites. Personal preventive measures include using repellents, mosquito coils and vaporizers, and wearing pants and long-sleeved shirts.
TOURISM
S Korean visitor goal set
The nation has set a goal with South Korea of increasing the number of visitors both ways to 1 million this year, through more customized travel packages. Taiwan Visitors Association and the Korea Association of Travel Agents agreed on the goal on Friday in Miaoli County. Both sides hope to build on last year’s momentum, when bilateral visits hit a record high of nearly 870,000, Tourism Bureau director-general David Hsieh (謝謂君) said, adding that of this number, about 351,000 South Korean tourists traveled to Taiwan. To further boost inbound tourism, the bureau said it will develop more diverse travel packages to target female travelers or those who prefer in-depth tourism — the two main categories of tourists to South Korea. Tourist-friendly campaigns, including Korean language services, are to be offered more comprehensively, so that visitors can more easily venture outside metropolitan areas to rural scenic spots, the bureau said.
DEVELOPMENT
New cultural park touted
The Taoyuan County Government said it plans to convert a former military dependents’ community into a cultural park. Since 2012, Matsu New Village (馬祖新村) has been designated by the Ministry of National Defense as one of 13 culture zones featuring military dependents’ villages, a county government official said. About 20 years ago, the number of veterans and their families in Taoyuan exceeded 100,000, the official said, adding that few communities have been well-preserved. The new park is expected to feature locations and facilities for research and development, education and performance. The remodeling plan is to focus on preserving the culture of military dependents’ villages, but it will also be made available for the filming of TV or movies, the official 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