■ Health
Children's livers at risk
Liver disease is one of the major causes of death among children in Taiwan, according to the Children's Liver Foundation. Liver diseases claim some 10,000 lives every year in this country, where there are an estimated 3 million hepatitis B virus carriers and another 300,000 hepatitis C virus carriers, statistics made available by the foundation yesterday show. Adults are not the only ones at risk; liver diseases are also rather common among children, officials from the foundation said.
■ Disaster Relief
Millions of dollars received
The Ministry of the Interior said yesterday that it has received more than NT$276.07 million (US$8.11 million) in donations as of Monday for Tropical Storm Mindulle relief. Ministry officials said that since the ministry set up a special account to receive donations on July 5, money has continued to flow in. The ministry has also received various kinds of relief materials, such as of electric ovens, washers and refrigerators, the officials added. Tropical Storm Mindulle, which hit Taiwan July 2, brought torrential rains that triggered serious flooding and landslides in many mountainous areas in central Taiwan.
■ Weather
Typhoon Rananim nears
The Central Weather Bureau (CWB) may issue land and sea typhoon warnings for Typhoon Rananim if its velocity and direction of remained unchanged. As of press time last night, this tropical storm, moving towards the direction of northwest at 13kph, had been declared as a typhoon due to its increasing velocity. The CWB warned fishing vessels operating off eastern seaboard and along southern seafront of the Ryukyu chain to be aware of the latest weather reports. As a result of the nearby typhoon, northern, northeastern and eastern regions of Taiwan may experience sporadic rains today, while the mountainous region in northwest may experience heavier rainfalls.
■ Tourism
Ecology project planned
Twenty volunteers from Taiwan and Japan will take part in an activity to enhance the ecology in an area in Taitung Country, the first program of its kind in Taiwan, the Taiwan Environmental Information Association said yesterday. Association officials said the volunteers will work in Lichia forest to create a small artificial wetland to help residents there with their wastewater from Aug. 15 to 18. The officials noted that the "eco-working holiday" programs have been undertaken for years in Japan and Britain.
■ Diplomacy
Deputy to leave post
Deputy Representative to the US, Lee Chen-hsiung (李辰雄), will leave his post in Washington at the end of this month and return to Taiwan. Lee said in a recent farewell banquet given in his honor that he was very happy to serve overseas Taiwanese expatriates during the past year. Lee, who graduated from the Department of Law from National Taiwan University, has served in the diplomatic field for more than three decades. He had been ambassador to Gambia and director-general of the Department of African Affairs of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. Lee, who assumed the deputy representative in June last year, will be reassigned to work in the foreign ministry and his vacancy will be filled by Stanley Kao (高碩泰), who is the deputy representative to the WTO.
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