■ Earthquake
Taitung rocked by temblor
A moderate quake shook the southeast yesterday, the Central Weather Bureau said, but no damage or injuries were immediately reported. The magnitude-4.4 quake was centered under the Pacific Ocean about 22km east of Taitung, the bureau said.
■ Defense
No change to name policy
The practice of using the names of cities in China for the names of Taiwan's war-ships will remain unchanged, a spokesman for the Ministry of National Defense said yesterday. Major General Huang Suey-sheng (黃穗生) made the remark amid criticism by some legislators that Tai-wanization should take precedence over siniciza-tion. Huang said that under the Constitution, the names of warships are to be taken from the geographical names defined by the Constitution as national land and from national heroes. He said the principle of naming warships will not change and there is no political consideration involved since the defense ministry acts in accordance with the Constitution. He also noted that the ministry has used places in Taiwan for the names of some vessels.
■ Travel
China trip warning issued
Farms in China should be scratched from travel itineraries because the northwest Xinjian region has been hit by an outbreak of foot and mouth disease, the Council of Agriculture said yesterday. Bureau of Animal and Plant Inspection and Quarantine officials said wire agency reports from Beijing said there was an epidemic in Xinjiang, a major livestock producing area. "Carrying out cross-strait exchange activities frequently does increase the challenge of Taiwan's epidemic prevention and control tasks," Hsiao Tsung-yao (蕭宗堯), a division director at the bureau, told the Taipei Times. Hundreds of outbreaks of foot and mouth disease have been observed over the past 40 years in China, including Yunnan, a top destination for Taiwanese tourists. Hsiao said Taiwan has never imported products made from Chinese rumi-nants, such as cattle, sheep and pigs. Hsiao urged local residents not to purchase related products whose sources remain unidentified.
■ Cross-strait ties
More illegals for Kinmen
Illegal Chinese immigrants will be sent to Kinmen and Matsu for temporary deten-tion to facilitate repatriation, Mainland Affairs Council Vice Chairman Johnnason Liu (劉德勳) said yesterday. Liu told the Tainan City Government that Beijing has often delayed in taking back illegal Chinese immi-grants for political reasons. As a result, it usually takes more than 100 days for Chinese authorities to send ships to take back Chinese immi-grants, adding to Taiwan's financial burden and staff workload. In some cases, he said, illegal Chinese immigrants have to stay far longer in Taiwan's detention centers. For instance, a group of illegals seized on March 18 were not repatriated until late August due to Beijing's reluctance to cooperate. Liu said the government is constructing a new deten-tion center in Kinmen which will be inaugurated by the end of the year. There are two detention centers for Chinese illegals already, one in Hsinchu and one in Ilan. There is also one in Matsu. "Once the Kinmen detention center is com-pleted, it will accommodate all illegal mainland immi-grants seized in Taiwan proper," Liu 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
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