ENTERTAINMENT
Concert Hall to be renovated
The 28-year-old National Concert Hall in Taipei yesterday closed its doors for a four-month renovation project, which is scheduled to be completed by Sept. 30. The hall’s seats, floors and sound-proof doors are to be replaced to provide a more comfortable environment for both audiences and musicians, the management said. The shops on the ground floor of the building are to remain open during the renovation. The hall is due reopen in October. The National Theater across Liberty Square from the concert hall is to close for several months next year so it can be renovated.
ENTERTAINMENT
Shone An dies aged 31
Actor Shone An, whose real name was Huang Yi-cheng, (安鈞璨), died of liver cancer yesterday at the age of 31, his management company said. An was surrounded by family and friends when he passed away at his home, Frigga Entertainment said in a statement. He first gained fame as a member of boy band Comic Boyz, which disbanded in 2005. He then turned to acting, appearing mainly in films and television dramas made in China. A memorial service is to be held on Monday, with the time and location to be announced later. “I will forever miss your handsome face, foul mouth and passionate and loyal heart. Love you forever,” television talk show hostess Dee Hsu (徐熙娣), better known as Little S (小S), said in a Sina Weibo post.
SOCIETY
Women having kids later
With more women choosing to delay motherhood, the average age of first-time mothers in Taiwan has increased steadily from 27.4 in 2004 to 30.5 last year, according to the latest statistics released by the Ministry of the Interior. Of the more than 100,000 women who became first-time mothers last year, 57.3 percent were aged 30 or older, the statistics showed. That represents a significant increase of 29.1 percentage points from 2004, when 28.3 percent of mothers giving birth for the first time were aged 30 or older. Of the 109,235 first-time mothers last year, 40.9 percent were aged between 30 and 34; 29.6 percent were between 25 and 29, 14.5 percent were between 35 and 39, and 1.8 percent were aged 40 or older. The statistics show that 211,399 babies were born in Taiwan last year, an increase of 8.4 percent from the previous year.
TRAVEL
V Air stopping Macau route
V Air, a low-cost subsidiary of TransAsia Airways, announced plans to suspend its service between Taipei and Macau from July 10, three months after it launched the route on April 10. The airline said that tickets for flights to Macau would be available until July 10. With a passenger load rate of just 40 percent on the route, V Air said it decided to suspend the service. However, its Bangkok route, which was launched in December last year, has proven to be very popular and has an average load rate of 80 percent, the airline said. It said its flights to Bangkok are to increase from one per day to 10 flights per week on July 2.
AGRICULTURE
Kyoho grapes Dubai-bound
The first 300kg batch of Kyoho grapes from Changhua County was shipped to the Middle East yesterday as part of the government’s efforts to help local farmers explore overseas markets. The county’s Bureau of Agriculture said the grapes were headed for supermarkets in Dubai and Bahrain, where they would sell for more than double local prices.
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