TOURISM
Kimura concludes visit
Japanese actor Takuya Kimura yesterday concluded a four-day visit after completing the shooting of a commercial by the Tourism Bureau at scenic spots in Taipei. The 42-year-old Kimura is one of the nation’s most popular Japanese entertainers and his first public visit attracted thousands of fans. However, unlike his arrival, when a large crowd gathered at Taiwan Taoyuan International Airport to greet him, only about 40 fans waited at the airport to get a five-second glimpse of the star as he stepped out of a car and made his way to an EVA Air VIP room. The Tourism Bureau invited Kimura to present the unique features of Taiwan in the commercial directed by John Woo (吳宇森), hoping that it would attract more Japanese tourists. Last year, tourist arrivals from Japan reached 1.63 million. The bureau said it expects Kimura’s ad to boost the number to between 1.7 million and 1.75 million this year. The ad is to be screened in Japan in September and October.
ENTERTAINMENT
Daughter born to Jay Chou
Taiwanese pop star Jay Chou (周杰倫) announced late on Monday that his wife, Taiwanese-Australian model and actress Hannah Quinlivan (昆凌), gave birth to a girl by caesarean section. Chou’s announcement was made through his record label JVR Music, but the precise date of the birth has yet to be disclosed. Chou said in the statement that he is extremely happy, but he did not offer any further details about the child, such as her name or weight, saying only that he would provide more information later. Quinlivan’s management firm Breeze Couture said the 21-year-old first-time mother had been transferred to a postpartum care center at an undisclosed location.
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