SPORTS
Jeremy Lin coming
Houston Rockets point guard Jeremy Lin (林書豪) is set to start an Asian tour next week that will include a week-long stay in Taiwan and a 10-day, five-city visit to China. The Taiwanese American basketball star is to arrive in Beijing tomorrow, after which he will head to Shanghai, Wuhan, Guangzhou and Dongguan. He will then land in Taiwan on July 16. Lin’s packed schedule includes publicity events on July 17 and 18. That will be followed by a youth basketball camp on July 19 and 20 with Steve Novak of the Toronto Raptors as guest coach, according to tour sponsor Adidas. The visit comes amid rumors that Lin will be traded by his team. In a bid to woo New York Knicks forward Carmelo Anthony, the Houston Rockets on Wednesday put up billboards and banners of Anthony wearing a No. 7 Rockets jersey, which currently belongs to Lin. Lin appeared upset with the move and said he felt disrespected.
FESTIVALS
Fireworks festival launched
Changhua County yesterday launched its annual Wanggong Fireworks Festival with a ceremony at a temple near the fishing port. Now in its 10th year, the festival features fireworks displays, local produce and delicacies and a music festival — which Changhua County Commissioner Cho Po-yuan (卓伯源) said rivals the better-known Kenting music festival in Pingtung and the Gongliao music festival in New Taipei City. Cho praised Wanggong (王功), a small fishing port in Changhua’s Fangyuan Township (芳苑), for its “distinctive features,” such as beautiful sunsets and oyster aquaculture. As a further incentive for visitors to brave the hot weather, the county government has prepared 500 soft-serve ice cream cones and 500 commemorative hats to hand out for free. Free shuttle bus service is available to help visitors get to and from the port.
CULTURE
S Korean fair draws 50,000
About 50,000 people visited a large-scale South Korean fair in Taipei yesterday to check out the country’s pop cultural offerings, including music and TV dramas. You Jin-ho, director of event organizer Korea Tourism Organization, said the number of people who visited on the first day of the two-day event at the Taipei World Trade Center Exhibition Hall 3 was double what he expected. Lines of people were seen at the cosmetics and skin care booths, while others sampled South Korean snacks and learned about options to study in the country. The show features 124 booths from 85 organizations. Admission is free.
CULTURE
Comic con opens on Aug. 7
Graphic artists, voice actors and animators from Taiwan and Japan are to gather in Taipei on Aug. 7 for the opening of this year’s Comic Exhibition. So far, 24 Taiwanese and Japanese artists are set to participate in the exhibition’s activities and book-signing events, with more expected to sign up in the coming weeks, said the event organizer, the Taipei-based Chinese Animation and Comic Publishers Association. Animation powerhouse Disney will be participating for the first time, the association said. Japanese actor Yuki Kaji, who voiced the main character of the popular anime series Attack on Titan, and manga artist Isaku Natsume, known for her work on False Memories 2, will be at the exhibition. The scale of the exhibition will be the largest to date, with more than 60 publishers setting up about 530 booths, compared with about 450 last year. The exhibition is to run until Aug. 12 at the Taipei World Trade Center Exhibition Hall 1.
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
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
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