SOCIETY
Hornets attack runners
A swam of hornets yesterday attacked about a dozen runners during the Taroko Gorge Marathon in Hualien County, leaving two hospitalized, the organizers said, adding that they were not in life-threatening condition. Chang Chih-chiang (張志強), head of the Hualien County Marathon Road Running Association, said that one of the athletes went into anaphylactic shock, but has since regained consciousness and is being treated at Hualien Armed Forces General Hospital. Another runner experienced an allergic reaction to the stings and is being treated at a local hospital, Chang said, adding that the rest of the injured runners were attended by emergency workers at the scene and continued the marathon. The incident happened on a section of the marathon across the Buluowan Plateau (布洛灣台地) at about 8:50am he said. About 13,500 runners participated in the competition which featured four courses, including a 42.195km marathon and a half-marathon.
CULTURE
Polish Office to hold concert
A free outdoor recital of works by Polish composer Frederic Chopin is to be held in Taipei this afternoon, the Polish Office in Taipei said in a statement yesterday. The recital, to be performed by Taiwan-based Polish pianist Kamil Tokarski and his student David Lin (林大一), would be the first such outdoor event the office has organized in Taiwan, it said. The concert is to begin at 3pm near the rose garden in Chiang Kai-shek Shilin Residence Park in the city’s Shilin District (士林), the office said. The event is inspired by the famous Chopin concerts in Warsaw’s Lazienki Park every summer to celebrate the composer, the office said, adding that this year marks his 210th birthday.
CULTURE
Mayday announces dates
Rock band Mayday yesterday announced the dates for their upcoming “Mayday fly to 2021” tour scheduled from next month to March next year. Six-thousand free tickets would be given to medical personnel, the band said in a statement. The tour is to feature five performances at the Taoyuan International Baseball Stadium, on Dec. 26, 27 and 31, and Jan. 1 and 2, and five at the Taichung Intercontinental Baseball Stadium, on Feb. 17, 18, 20, 21 and 22, Mayday said. The tour would conclude at the Tainan Municipal Stadium with five performances, on March 20, 21, 27, 28 and 29, with the final performance marking the band’s 24th anniversary, it said. “We want to show our appreciation to the unnamed heroes who work day and night,” the band said. Sales of tickets to the concerts in Taoyuan and Taichung would begin through the tixCraft ticketing service on Nov. 29, while those for Tainan would be sold starting on Jan. 10, the band said.
FOREIGN RELATIONS
Taiwan sends relief funds
Taiwan has donated US$200,000 each to three diplomatic allies in Central America, all of which were strongly affected by Hurricane Eta this week, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs said in a statement on Friday. Eta made landfall in Nicaragua on Tuesday and was later downgraded to a tropical storm as it moved into the neighboring countries of Honduras and Guatemala, foreign media reported. Heavy rain caused casualties and property losses, as well as severe damage to infrastructure in the three nations, the ministry said. All Taiwanese living in the area are safe, it said, adding that it would keep a close watch on the aftermath of the storm and provide further assistance if needed.
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