ENTERTAINMENT
Jody Chiang concerts begin
Yesterday’s concert at the Taipei Arena was the first of Taiwanese pop diva Jody Chiang’s (江蕙) 25 farewell concerts. Chiang’s manager Eric Chen (陳子鴻) said on Facebook that he estimated that Chiang had lost at least 5kg while preparing for the concerts. About 250,000 people are expected to attend the singer’s concerts to take place through Sept. 13 at the Taipei and Kaohsiung arenas. Chiang, 53, on Jan. 2 announced that she would end her singing career with 16 farewell concerts. Her announcement set off a rush to buy tickets for the concerts, overwhelming the official ticketing site and ticketing machines at convenience stores across Taiwan during the three days the tickets were on sale. To cater to fans who failed to secure tickets, Chiang announced she would hold nine additional concerts.
APPS
Lost pet locator launched
The Taipei City Animal Protection Office has launched a mobile app that enables residents to upload photos and videos of their lost pets and provide descriptions to increase the probability of locating them. After owners of lost pets upload the information, other users of the app can offer assistance, the office said, calling the new app more efficient than putting up posters. The app was created last month in combination with an existing app developed in 2012 that offers information on adopting pets, resulting in an app that can be used to both find out the latest on pet adoption or to seek help finding a lost pet. The app is available in the Google Play Store and the Apple App Store.
TRANSPORT
Tamsui MRT jumper fined
A man was fined NT$25,000 for jumping onto the tracks of Taipei’s MRT metropolitan railway system at Tamsui Station on Friday, causing a train delay, although no one was injured in the incident. The passenger in his 30s jumped from the second platform of the station onto the tracks at 7:09am. He then walked along the tracks toward the Hongshulin Station, Taipei Rapid Transit Corp said. The traffic control center shut down the power following the incident to enable the station manager to pursue the passenger, the company said, adding that the man was taken to a safe area and the power was switched back on. The man was issued a fine based on the Mass Rapid Transit Act (大眾捷運法) and was questioned by police, the company said.
SOCIETY
Planet named after Sachs
National Central University (NCU) has decided to name a planet after Albie Sachs of South Africa, the winner of the first Tang Prize in Rule of Law. On behalf of the university, Tang Prize Foundation CEO Chern Jenn-chuan (陳振川) delivered the certificate to Sachs on July 22. In light of Sachs’ contribution to promoting democratic values, pluralism, social justice and human rights protection, the university said it decided to name a planet it discovered in 2006 “175419 Albiesachs.” Sachs, a lawyer and human rights activist who spent much of his life fighting apartheid, helped write the new Constitution of South Africa and was appointed by late South African president Nelson Mandela in 1994 to serve as a justice of the constitutional Court — a position he held until 2009. The Tang Prize was awarded to Sachs last year “for his many contributions to human rights and justice globally through an understanding of the rule of law in which the dignity of all persons is respected and the strengths and values of all communities are embraced,” according to the citation.
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