TRAVEL
Taipei best Asia destination
Taipei has won a Lifestyle Leisure Award from Global Traveler magazine, which listed the city as the “best leisure destination in Asia,” a Tourism Bureau official stationed in Los Angeles said. This is the second consecutive year that Taipei has won the award from the US magazine — the only monthly publication for business and luxury leisure travelers, Brad Shih (施照輝), director of the bureau’s Los Angeles office, said at a reception on Thursday at Sofitel Los Angeles in Beverly Hills. Taipei topped the list, followed by Seoul, Singapore, Tokyo, the Thai island of Phuket, Hong Kong, Bangkok, Ho Chi Minh City, Osaka and Bali in descending order. Taiwan has also been nominated to compete in the “Destination with the Highest Client Satisfaction, Asia/South Pacific” Wave Awards sponsored by Los Angeles-based TravelAge West magazine, the bureau said. The winner is to be announced on June 13.
HEALTH
Three anion products pulled
Three negative-ion products have been found to emit radiation higher than the permissible level of 1 millisievert (mSv) and ordered removed from shelves, the Department of Consumer Protection said on Wednesday. The items — a face mask, comforter and blanket — were among 25 samples of anion products randomly tested by the Atomic Energy Council. The comforter had the highest radiation level of 7.05mSv, while the blanket measured 4.7mSv and the thermal mask 1.884mSv, the tests showed. As excessive exposure to ionizing radiation can cause cancer in humans, the department ordered the three products removed from stores. Manufacturers are to be given a period to make improvements or face a fine of NT$60,000 to NT$1.5 million (US$1,917 to US$47,928).
SOCIETY
Man fined for causing panic
A man who took and shared a photo purporting to show a large crack down the middle of a road in Taipei after an earthquake was on Thursday fined NT$3,000 by the Taipei District Court for disrupting social order and causing public panic. The man, surnamed Wang (王), was fined for violating the Social Order Maintenance Act (社會秩序維護法), which prohibits spreading rumors that undermine public order and peace. Wang said he took the photo from his office after a magnitude 6.1 quake hit the east on April 18 and shared it in a Line messaging group chat. He said he did not verify if the photo really showed cracks in the road before sharing it, not realizing that doing so without verification could have legal consequences.
WEATHER
Heavy rains hit nation
Downpours yesterday were caused by a front that is part of the ongoing plum rain season, the Central Weather Bureau said, adding that the heavy rain came after thick cloud cover moved from south China to Taiwan. The bureau earlier yesterday issued a torrential rain alert for Taoyuan and Hsinchu, and a heavy rain warning for 12 other cities and counties, including Taipei, New Taipei City, Yilan, Taichung, Yunlin, Tainan, Kaohsiung and Pingtung. Because of the rain, daytime temperatures in the north fell to about 25oC from 30oC a day earlier, and the mercury fell to 28 to 29oC in the central and southern areas, it said. The bureau defines heavy rain as accumulated rainfall of more than 80mm in 24 hours or more than 40mm of rainfall in one hour, while torrential rain indicates accumulated rainfall of more than 350mm in 24 hours.
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