SPORTS
Foreign volunteers recruited
The organizing committee of the 2017 Summer Universiade in Taipei said 508 foreigners have signed up as volunteers for the Games. Most are students studying under exchange programs, and they will work alongside 18,000 local volunteers, the committee said. It also said that it will offer a course to about 1,000 certified or licensed physical therapists or athletic trainers on how to assist athletes at the August event. Experts have been invited to lecture as part of the program, it said. In Taiwan most athletic trainers are graduates of university physical education departments, and tend to focus on pre-game injury prevention and treatment, such as muscle taping and relaxation, to prevent exacerbating injuries, the committee said. This year’s Universiade is scheduled to open at the Taipei Municipal Stadium on Aug. 19 and run through Aug. 30, with about 12,000 athletes, coaches and support staff from more than 150 nations.
SOCIETY
Language variety endorsed
Minister of Culture Cheng Li-chiun (鄭麗君) on Saturday said that the mother tongues of the nation’s new immigrants should be cherished to make Taiwan’s culture more diverse. In the spirit of equal cultural rights, the rights of those who speak in different languages should be taken into account so that new immigrants can retain their mother tongue after they move to Taiwan, she said. Cheng made the remarks at a public hearing in Taichung on her ministry’s draft national language development act. “Concern for the preservation and development of every language in this land is not only a responsibility toward Taiwan, but toward the world, as every language is an important asset of world civilization,” she said. Nearly 270 individuals or groups concerned about language development registered to speak at the hearing, but the number of who could actually attend was limited to about 70.
CRIME
Dad charged in baby’s death
A man was last week indicted on charges of manslaughter after allegedly mixing sleeping pills into the formula he fed to his two-month-old daughter to stop her crying. The Shilin District Prosecutors’ Office on Wednesday said the man, identified only by his surname, Chen (陳), added ground-up sleeping tablets to the baby’s formula on several occasions in July last year. The pills, which Chen had legally obtained from his doctor, contained flunitrazepam (FM2), and considered a date-rape drug because of its strong hypnotic effect. After discovering the baby rigid and unresponsive, he rushed her to the hospital, but doctors were unable to revive her.
EDUCATION
Schools to work with police
The Ministry of Education yesterday said that universities and schools will be instructed to work more closely with police to establish a database of students involved in drugs to better monitor drug abuse on and off campus. According to the ministry, 7,750 people aged between 18 and 24 were involved in drug-related cases last year, including 183 college students and 207 high-school and vocational-school students. However, police do not have access to the data, because it can only be accessed by the ministry. Without that information, it is difficult for law enforcement officials to identify schools where drug abuse is rife, the ministry 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
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