■Weather
Taipei cooks in 38℃ heat
Temperatures in Taipei hit 37.8℃ yesterday, the highest on record so far this year and the sixth-highest since records began early last century. A weatherman with the Central Weather Bureau said that the weather will remain hot and humid throughout the nation for at least the next three days under the influence of a strong high pressure system in the Western Pacific. Temperatures yesterday were over 35℃ everywhere in the nation. There might be some afternoon thunderstorms on Thursday and over the weekend, the weatherman said.
■ Travel
Qatar lifts entry ban
The Qatari Ministry of Health on Sunday lifted an entry ban imposed on travelers coming from Taiwan, China and Hong Kong. An official source at the Health Ministry said this step followed the latest reports of the World Health Organization regarding the SARS disease, indicating it was under complete control in these countries and that no new cases were registered lately. The ministry had imposed a 14-day quarantine on travellers coming from these places. The source confirmed that no cases of SARS infection have been registered in Qatar.
■ Foreign labor
Fire kills Thai woman
A Thai woman was killed in a fire at a textile factory in Chiayi County's Shuishang township late Sunday night, police said yesterday. Two other Thai women who worked at the factory were badly burned in the fire and remain in critical condition in intensive-care wards, police said. The deceased was identified as Strilark, police said, adding that the 22-year-old had inhaled too much smoke and was pronounced dead on arrival at hospital. The injured women were unconscious when firefighters discovered them and took them out of the burning factory building.
■ Environment
Fat fish go on diet
The National Pingtung Museum of Marine Biology & Aquarium has been feeding vegetables to the sea fish in its aquarium to help them lose weight. "We used to feed our fish shrimps, squid and oyster. After eating this for a long time, the fish became fat and their colors faded. The increased nitrogen in their excrement polluted the water in the aquariums," a marine biologist at the Pingtung aquarium said by phone. "The meat diet also affected their hormones, disturbing their breeding cycle," he said. "Through research, we realized that fish in the sea eat both meat and sea weeds," he said. So last year, the aquarium began to add two vegetable meals to the diet of the fish. "Twice a day we tie vegetables with ropes and dip them into the aquariums. The fish swamp to the veggies and chew on them," the biologist said. The vegetables are mainly cabbage, spinach, carrot and turnip.
■ Diplomacy
Farmers help Panama
Taiwanese agricultural experts have helped farmers in Panama's Darien, Veraguas, Herrera and Cocle provinces to build structures for growing tomatoes, peppers, cucumbers, beans and other vegetables, according to officials of the Republic of China Embassy in the central American country. Each structure covers either 175m2 or 350m2 of land and allows for pest- and climate-controlled conditions for the vegetables being cultivated. So far, 37 of the structures have been built under a cooperation project, according to the officials.
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
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