TRANSPORT
False alarm delays HSR
Three Taiwan High Speed Rail Corp trains were delayed yesterday as a result of a bomb threat that turned out to be a false alarm. Nearly 1,000 passengers were affected by the delays, which ranged from 14 to 32 minutes. The incident started at 12:48pm, when an attendant found a note indicating a bomb threat in the sixth carriage of train No. 1155, prior to its departure from Taipei. The attendant reported the note to railway police, who later discovered that the note had been left behind after a bomb threat drill a few days ago. Taiwan High Speed Rail Corp has been holding bomb threat drills regularly since a suitcase containing explosives was found in a toilet on one of its trains in April last year.
CULTURE
Flora exhibition opens today
Legacy burnishing was the focus as Taipei Mayor Hau Lung-bin (郝龍斌) toured a flora exhibition at the Taipei Expo Park in the Yuanshan (圓山) area yesterday, extolling the lasting benefits he said were brought by the Taipei International Flora Exhibition, one of the largest international events hosted under his watch. The exhibition is set to open at the site today. Hau said that hosting the exhibition would bring close to 3 million visitors to the Expo Park, adding that the Taipei City Council had required the city government to guarantee at least 3 million visitors per year to the park when it was first built. Council of Agriculture Deputy Minister Chen Wen-te (陳文德) said the nation’s yearly flower exports have doubled to US$200 million since the flora exhibition, thanks to the international visibility the exhibition brought the nation’s industry. This year’s exhibition has an international travel theme, with locally grown flower exhibits displayed around models of international landmarks. The exhibition runs until Dec. 14.
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