SOCIETY
Prime view of Jupiter
Astronomy buffs will have a chance to find out what is happening with the great red spot on Jupiter when the planet moves closest to Earth and reaches its brightest today, the Taipei Astronomical Museum said yesterday. The opposition of Jupiter, which occurs when the Earth comes between the sun and the largest planet in the solar system, will offer the best view of Jupiter this year, it said. The great red spot is a persistent high-pressure region in the atmosphere of Jupiter, producing an anticyclonic storm, the largest in the solar system, and has been continuously observed since 1830. The opposition will take place at 11:28pm, although Jupiter will be visible to the naked eye all night, weather permitting, the museum said. The planet will remain relatively bright until the middle of this month, it added. Those interested in getting a closer look should visit the museum between 7pm and 9pm on Saturdays this month to use its telescope, it said.
ENTERTAINMENT
LGBTQ films in Bangkok
The Taiwan LGBTQ Film Festival in Bangkok opened on Saturday with a screening of Small Talk (日常對話), a documentary by Huang Hui-chen (黃惠偵) detailing her relationship with her mother. After the screening, a forum was hosted by Jay Lin (林志杰), founder and chief executive of Taipei-based Portico Media and founder of LGBTQ streaming platform GagaOOLala, to highlight the steps that Taiwan went through to legalize same-sex marriage. The week-long festival was curated by Chen Yen-lin (陳彥霖), Alliance Francaise de Bangkok and the Documentary Club, and aims to highlight the development of Taiwan’s LGBTQ rights and same-sex-marriage legislation. Films in the festival include Blue Gate Crossing (藍色大門), Queer Taiwan (酷兒台灣), Tale of the Lost Boys (他和他的心旅程), Juliets and I Don’t Want to Sleep Alone (黑眼圈), a 2006 Malaysian-Taiwanese romantic drama written and directed by Tsai Ming-liang (蔡明亮).
TOURISM
Kinmen carnival announced
Kinmen’s nine-week summer tourist carnival, focusing on the local fauna, landscape, battlefields and ceramics industry, opens on July 1, with new activities every week until the end of August, the Kinmen County Government said. First up is to be a birdwatching tour to spot migratory blue-tailed bee-eaters on their way south, it said. The carnival would also involve Jiangong Islet (建功嶼), which is connected to Kinmen by a walkway accessible only at low tide, will allow visitors to see horseshoe crabs in the intertidal zone on either side, it added. Battlefield tourism is to be highlighted in August at the Liuyu camp, a converted military base that now offers firefights in an indoor laser tag facility. A tour of the Kinmen Ceramic Factory, the nation’s only government-owned kiln, will give visitors a chance to learn how to mold, glaze and paint porcelain, it added.
CRIME
Teen drug offenses decline
The number of teenagers arrested for drug offenses has dropped over the past three years, the Criminal Investigation Bureau said. There was a 27.95 percent annual decline last year to 6,886, compared with 9,558 in 2017 and 9,583 in 2016, it said on Wednesday. The decline can be attributed to the efforts of the ministries of education and justice to raise awareness about the dangers of drug abuse, it said. The National Police Agency has launched a new anti-drug campaign featuring online educational videos and more random spot checks at places frequented by teenagers, it 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
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