EDUCATION
Students tally up a math win
Local students won four gold and two bronze medals at this year’s International Mathematical Olympiad (IMO) in Cape Town, South Africa, placing third overall, the Ministry of Education said yesterday. It was the nation’s best performance in 22 years at the annual mathematics competition for high-school students, the ministry said. In the individual category, Wu Po-sheng (吳博生) of Taipei Municipal Jianguo High School had a perfect score to tie for first with two other students, one from China and the other from Australia, the ministry said. Wu’s interest in math became evident in kindergarten, when he began asking his teachers to quiz him in the subject, his mother said. The Taiwanese team comprised six students selected and trained by a group of more than 10 teachers, including Fuh Cheng-der (傅承德), a professor at National Central University’s Graduate Institute of Statistics. The IMO, a problem-solving contest for high-school students, is usually held in a different nation each year in July. This year, 103 countries are participating in the competition that ran from July 3 to today.
SPORTS
World Cup fuels lottery
The Taiwan Sports Lottery has generated NT$1.8 billion (US$60.06 million) in sales so far from the ongoing FIFA World Cup, the company said on Friday. The lottery’s total sales from World Cup bets are likely to reach NT$2.2 billion, 2.7 times more than during the previous tournament four years ago, it said. Thursday’s semi-final between Argentina and the Netherlands alone brought in NT$170 million, the highest amount generated by a single game so far, it said, adding that sales were likely to explode over the weekend as fans gear up for the Germany-Argentina final today.
CULTURE
Chow to lead orchestra tour
First lady Chow Mei-ching (周美青) and the Taipei Sinfonietta are to depart today on a performance tour of Finland and the Baltic states to celebrate the upcoming 30th anniversary of the Taipei Sinfonietta and Philharmonic Orchestra. The Taipei Sinfonietta is to perform in Estonia on Tuesday and in Latvia and Finland from Wednesday to Friday. The repertoire is to cover classical and contemporary works, including Mozart’s piano concertos and works by musicians from Taiwan and northern Europe, the orchestra’s spokesman said, adding that this is the eighth year that the orchestra has been invited to perform in Europe and the first time it will be led there by the first lady. Founded in 1985, the orchestra developed under the baton of US conductor Henry Mazer, who was its musical director for 17 years until his death in 2002.
WEATHER
Rammasun may bring rain
Tropical Storm Rammasun, which formed yesterday east of the Philippines, is expected to start affecting Taiwan on Wednesday, the Central Weather Bureau said. As of 2 pm yesterday, the storm was about 2,500km east-southeast of the nation’s southernmost tip, Oluanpi (鵝鑾鼻), moving westward at 20kph, the bureau said. The storm was packing maximum sustained winds of 64.8kph, with gusts of up to 90kph, the bureau said. Rammasun means “god of thunder” in Thai. Earlier this month, the bureau said that three to five tropical storms or typhoons could strike the nation in the coming months, while up to 32 storms could form in the northwestern Pacific. As of the end of last month, seven storms had formed in the region this year, exceeding the average of 4.3 seen over the past years, the bureau 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