SOCIETY
Raft sails home
A home-made bamboo raft yesterday returned to Hualien Fishing Port, completing a round-trip to Japan’s Yonaguni Island in five days. Escorted by two yachts, 10 people in their 60s and 70s took turns paddling the raft made of five bamboo poles on the 220km voyage, which started on Tuesday. Rotating in pairs, the sailors paddled the 6m-long raft to Yonaguni, the westernmost island of Japan. The three vessels, carrying a total of 15 people, arrived in Yonaguni on Wednesday evening and embarked on the return leg on Saturday morning. On arrival in Yonaguni, the sailors were greeted by Japanese yachtsman Komai, who had sailed 1,000km from Nagoya to Yonaguni to welcome them. Su Tar-zen (蘇達貞), a retired National Taiwan Ocean University professor, said the purpose of the voyage was to show people the beauty of Taiwan’s seas.
Photo: CNA
SOCIETY
Gas leak prompts evacuation
A chemical plant worker was hospitalized and people living near the plant in Taoyuan were evacuated after a gas leak yesterday, Taoyuan city Fire Department officials said. An ambulance and seven fire trucks were sent to a factory owned by T.N.C. Industrial Co in Lujhu District (蘆竹) at 8:30am in response to reports that a yellow-colored gas was leaking, they said. A 60-year-old worker was taken to hospital after feeling ill, firefighters said. The leak was brought under control at 9:45am, they said, adding that the cause was being investigated. T.N.C. Industrial makes liquid chemicals for the high-tech industry and coating chemicals for a wide range of applications, according to its Web site.
WEATHER
Rain forecast for festival
The Central Weather Bureau has forecast occasional showers and thundershowers for the nation’s south and east tomorrow, when the Dragon Boat Festival is to be celebrated, as well as on Wednesday. Brief afternoon thundershowers brought by southwesterly winds are expected in the rest of the nation, the bureau said. Meteorologist Daniel Wu (吳德榮), the bureau’s former director-general, cited data from the European Center for Medium-Range Weather Forecasts as saying that with a front lingering over the Bashi Channel, humidity in western Taiwan would decline. Occasional showers are expected in the nation’s eastern and mountainous areas until tomorrow, when the front will begin to move north, triggering showers and thundershowers in the south, Wu said. The bureau said Taipei recorded a temperature of 19.7°C on Saturday, the lowest over the past week, adding that the nation’s low-lying areas also recorded lows of less than 20°C.
ENVIRONMENT
Air quality worsens
Air quality yesterday deteriorated to unhealthy levels for sensitive groups in several areas in the nation’s southwest, while it was ranked good or moderate in the rest of the nation, according to the Environmental Protection Administration’s Taiwan Air Quality Monitoring Network. As of 10am, air quality was “orange” in Yunlin County’s Douliou Township (斗六), Chiayi, several districts in Tainan and Kaohsiung, and in Kinmen County. An “orange” signal also flashed at a mobile monitoring station in Taichung’s Beitun District (北屯). “Orange” level indicates that air quality is unhealthy for small children, elderly people and people with chronic diseases, according to the network’s Web site.
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