■ EDUCATION
Chen hails name change
President Chen Shui-bian (陳水扁) yesterday commended the renaming of a maritime technology college in Shezi (社子), saying that it reflected the status of Taiwan. The China College of Marine Technology and Commerce changed its name to Taipei College of Maritime Technology on Wednesday. Its status was upgraded from a two-year vocational college to a four-year vocational college. Speaking at a ceremony yesterday morning, Chen said the school had been right to change its name. Founded in 1966, China Marine College changed its name to China College of Marine Technology and Commerce in 1998 and became a two-year vocational college. The school later expanded to a second campus in Tamsui, Taipei County. The school plans to become a technology university in 2011.
■ HEALTH
COA bans meat from UK
The Council of Agriculture (COA) has temporarily banned imports of meat and related products from the UK after London announced an outbreak of foot-and-mouth disease (FMD) on a farm in Britain, an official said yesterday. Bureau of Animal and Plant Health Inspection and Quarantine Director Sung Hua-tsung (宋華聰) said that pork, mutton and beef imports from the UK were banned on Saturday, shortly after the British government announced the outbreak. Sung said that the ban would have little impact on the local market since British meat products constitute only a tiny fraction of the nation's total meat imports.
■ WEATHER
CWB watching typhoon
The Central Weather Bureau (CWB) said Pabuk, the sixth tropical storm of this year, formed yesterday afternoon, and a sea warning for Bashi Channel might be issued later today if the storm continues on its present path. The center of Pabuk was located 1,090km away from the southeast coast of Okinawa yesterday, moving west-southwest at a speed of 24kph. The maximum wind speed near the storm's center was measured at 65kph. The bureau said the typhoon was 1,600km away from Hengchun (恆春), Pingtung County, and was likely to move toward Taiwan. The bureau was also monitoring another tropical low pressure system that was located near the coast of Vietnam, which was likely to turn into a tropical storm as well. The bureau also said that western Taiwan will likely see thunderstorms and showers over the next two to five days because of a receding ridge of high pressure in the Pacific.
■ TRAVEL
Chen launches bike tour
President Chen Shui-bian (陳水扁) presided over a ceremony in front of the Presidential Office yesterday to launch an 11-day, 1,000km round-the-nation cycling trip. Organized by the Sports Affairs Council, 150 cyclists -- a record for the five-year-old tour -- are taking part in the ride, mostly college students from the US, the UK, Denmark, Ukraine, Germany, Brazil, Australia, Japan, Thailand, Malaysia, Indonesia, Macau and Taiwan. They will visit 18 cities and counties and 100 townships during their trip, which is sponsored by Farglory Business Group. The company has paid for an insurance policy for each cyclist and a paramedic vehicle to accompany the cyclists on their journey.
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