THE ARTS
Local illustrators honored
Eight Taiwanese graphic illustrators were among 77 selected to participate in the 55th Illustrators Exhibition to be held online during the Bologna Children’s Book Fair in June, the Taiwan Creative Content Agency said on Thursday. This year, 3,235 participants from 68 countries and regions submitted work for the exhibition, with 226 illustrators selected in the first round, including 24 Taiwanese. In the second and final round, 77 illustrators were selected, including eight Taiwanese, the agency said. Due to the COVID-19 pandemic, the exhibition is to be held online from June 14 to 17, it added. To help promote the illustrators, the agency said that it would team up with the Animation and Visual Effects Association to produce animated short films introducing each one.
SOCIETY
Taipei dog park launched
On Wednesday, Taipei opened its latest dog park at a fenced-off grassy area inside Guting Riverside Park (古亭河濱公園), next to the shores of the Sindian River (新店溪). The city’s eighth dog park, it totals 703m2, complete with a wash basin, a dispenser of bags for dog droppings and benches for the dogs’ human companions, Taipei City Animal Protection Office officials told the opening event. Officially designated the “Guting Dog Off-Leash Area,” the park cost NT$1.8 million (US$64,826), and was built with mixed playing areas for large and small dogs, Taipei Deputy Mayor Vivian Huang (黃珊珊) said.
TOURISM
Blue Cave safely seen via VR
The Penghu County Government has launched a virtual reality (VR) experience that gives people the opportunity to stay in the safe environment of the Penghu Marine Geopark in Magong City while enjoying the potentially treacherous “Blue Cave.” Located on the coast of the uninhabited Siji Islet (西吉嶼), the Blue Cave was created by natural erosion and is part of the South Penghu Marine National Park, the county’s Tourism Department said. Because of accidents involving visitors to the cave being swept away by unpredictable sea currents, all visitors are now required to apply for a permit to go to the islet, the department said. Given the difficulty of visiting the islet, the county government designed a VR Blue Cave experience in part of the geopark’s visitor center that is decorated with images and lights to recreate the cave’s surroundings, it said.
LEISURE
Zoo has leopard cat kittens
A rescued leopard cat kept at the Taipei Zoo gave birth to three kittens on Tuesday, the first such births for the zoo in 20 years, zoo officials said. Leopard cat Ping Ping (平平) gave birth at 5:43pm, 6pm and 6:20pm, officials said, adding that mating behavior was recorded in December last year between Ping Ping and Hsiao Yu (小魚), another rescued leopard cat kept at the zoo. To keep Ping Ping calm and fully rested, she has been separated from the kittens, whose sex remains undetermined, zoo spokesman Eric Tsao (曹先紹) said. Kittens continue growing away from their mother after 45 days, become independent at six months and reach sexual maturity at one-and-a-half years, Tsao said. Visitors would be allowed to see the kittens after they are 45 days old, at the earliest, he said, adding that the public would have the chance to vote on names for the felines. Ping Ping previously gave birth to An An (安安), but that cat died when it was released into the wild and ate a poisoned mouse, Tsao 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
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