■Weather
CWB monitoring storm
A storm that could become the fourth typhoon of the year formed yesterday morning and the Central Weather Bureau is keeping close watch on it. Central Weather Bureau meteorologists said that Tropical Storm Linfa is now located at sea 360km northwest of Manila, or about 750km west-southwest of Hengchun. The radius of the storm is 100km. Linfa is now almost stationary and whether it will impact this country depends on its course, official said, adding that the situation will become clearer in two days.
■ Legislative Yuan
Animal rights law passed
Those who kill animals illegally could face a fine of up to NT$250,000 (US$7,142), according to an amendment to the Animal Protection Law (野生動物保護法), which a Legislative Yuan committee passed yesterday. The amendment states that animals should be protected and not sold illegally or killed. Anyone violating the regulations by killing animals for their meat or fur or to used them as feed, or for scientific research purposes, will be liable for fines ranging from NT$50,000 to NT$250,000.
■ Health
USCDC doctor doing well
The US doctor believed to have developed SARS symptoms while investigating the disease in Taipei is recovering in Atlanta, Georgia health officials said yesterday. Dr. Chesley Richards Jr., an infection control expert with the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, arrived in Atlanta late Friday and was evaluated at a local hospital, said a spokesman for the Georgia Division of Public Health. A CDC spokeswoman said Richards is in good condition and is in isolation.
Agencies
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