CULTURE
Mermaid lantern to return
An award-winning giant mermaid-themed lantern featured in last year’s Penghu International Bay Light Festival is to be reintroduced in the Penghu International Fireworks Festival on Penghu County’s Jibei Islet (吉貝嶼) on June 5. The 8m lantern would be the festival’s main highlight and illumiate the islet’s pristine beaches, the Penghu Tourism Department said. It was first showcased in last year’s light festival from Sept. 19 to Nov. 7 and later won a prize in the MUSE Creative Awards organized by the New York-based International Awards Associates. The fireworks festival is to be centered around Magong (馬公) from April 22 to June 28.
HEALTH
Pork import fines hiked
People who bring unauthorized Malaysian pork products to Taiwan would be fined up to NT$1 million (US$35,328), as an outbreak of African swine fever has been reported in the Southeast Asian country, health authorities said on Wednesday. The fine has been hiked from NT$30,000, after Malaysia reported that the disease has caused the deaths of bearded pigs in the Pitas region, the Central Emergency Operation Center for African Swine Fever said. With immediate effect, people entering the nation with Malaysian pork products on them would be fined no less than NT$200,000, and fines for repeat offenders would be up to NT$1 million, it said. Foreigners who fail to pay the fine would be denied entry to Taiwan, the center added.
ARTS
Children win Czech prize
Two winners of an award at the 48th International Children’s Exhibition of Fine Arts Lidice, an art competition in the Czech Republic, received their prizes at the European country’s representative office in Taipei on Friday. Czech Economic and Cultural Office Taipei Deputy Director Dita Taborska presented prizes to Sheu Yu-hao (許育豪), 11, and Daniel Lan (藍紹齊), 9. Lan’s painting colorfully depicts a man carrying a bundle of wood, while Lan’s painting is a monochromatic surrealist piece. The competition is open to children aged four to 16 years, and works can be submitted by all types of schools and organizations working with children. It received more than 22,000 submissions from 78 countries last year, and nearly 1,400 were selected to be exhibited.
TRAFFIC
Detached wheel kills woman
A woman was killed on a freeway in Kaohsiung yesterday and her two daughters were injured after a wheel from a truck traveling in the opposite direction detached and bounced into their lane, striking the windshield of their vehicle, the National Highway Police Bureau said. They were traveling near the 364.4km mark on the southbound section of Sun Yat-sen Freeway (Freeway No. 1), the bureau said. Also involved in the accident was a man surnamed Kuo (郭), 50, who was driving with his family to Taitung, it said. The 47-year-old woman, who was in the front passenger seat, was killed instantly, the bureau said, adding that one daughter, 17, sustained a skull fracture, while her younger sister had minor bruising. Kuo was not injured, it said. The container truck was being driven by a 54-year-old man surnamed Huang (黃), who was in a northbound lane when a rear wheel detached, it said. Huang passed an alcohol test, police said, adding that an investigation was ongoing.
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