■Seismic activity
4.7 tremor rattles the east
An earthquake measuring 4.7 on the Richter scale shook eastern Taiwan yesterday, seismologists said, but there were no immediate reports of casualties or damage. The quake struck at 11:25am with its epicenter 38.7km southeast of Hualien. It originated 28.1km under the seabed. The nation was hit by a powerful quake measuring 6.8 on the Richter scale last Sept. 16. A tremor of the same magnitude on March 31 killed five people in Taipei. A quake measuring 7.6 on the Richter scale devastated central Taiwan on Sept. 21, 1999, leaving 2,400 people dead and some 100,000 homeless.
■ Weather
Forecasters expect rain
A cold front is expected to arrive in Taiwan today, brining brief rain to northern, northeastern and eastern Taiwan, according to the Central Weather Bureau. Temperatures fall below 20℃ by tomorrow, the Bureau said. Yesterday's weather ranged from clear to cloudy with temperatures rising above 28℃ except on the outlying islands of Kinmen, Matsu and Penghu. The cold front may also cause heavy fog in some parts of western Taiwan as well as Kinmen and Matsu in the morning. Daytime temperatures will be around 19℃ in northern and northeastern Taiwan, and around 23℃ in central and eastern Taiwan.
■ Crime
Woman stabbed in Vietnam
A 38-year-old Taiwanese woman and her Vietnamese maid were stabbed to death in Vietnam's southern metropolis of Ho Chi Minh city, police said yesterday. The bloody bodies of Tse Ho-yen and her 20-year-old housemaid were found on Saturday in Yen's apartment in the city's China town area, according to police. Police have seized a number of weapons including a variety of knives from the apartment, which had been ransacked. "We cannot provide further information because everything is under investigation and the autopsies are being carried out," she said, adding that police were alerted to the incident by the victims' neighbors. The neighbors said that the night before they heard a lot of noise and screams from the victims' apartment, then saw two women in their 20s hurriedly leaving the house, one of whom was wearing a blood-stained white blouse.
■ Environment
Climber starts fire
About 4.6 hectares of field near the Tanta Forest Road (丹大林道) in mountainous Hsinyi Township, Nantou County, were destroyed by fire yesterday. The fire was was inadvertently started by a mountain climber, according to the Council of Agriculture. According to Li Ju-shuen (李如順) of the COA's Taiwan Forestry Bureau, climber Lin Hsin-hsiung (林信雄), 33, lit a fire to warm himself on Saturday, but the fire inadvertently spread. He has been charged with violating the Forest Law and offences against public safety. To prevent the fire from spreading, the Taichung-based Airborne Squadron under the National Police Administration yesterday morning used B-234 helicopters to carry water from nearby Sun Moon Lake (日月潭). Officials said helicopters flew 13 water-discharge sorties to extinguish the blaze. About 17.5 tonnes of water can be carried with each sortie. Officials said that the fire caused limited financial losses because the blaze destroyed reeds, which have little economic value. The fire did not spread to valuable red cypress forest nearby. Dozens of forestry officials yesterday stayed at the scene of the fire to monitor the situation.
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