■ Temblor detection
The Central Weather Bureau has improved its earthquake detection system and officials said yesterday that by the end of next year they would be able to detect a magnitude-4 or stronger earthquake and issue a notification within 35 seconds. The nation suffered its deadliest earthquake in five decades on Sept. 21, 1999, when it was hit by a magnitude-7.3 temblor, leaving 2,415 people dead and more than 10,000 injured and causing serious damage to property and infrastructure nationwide. At that time, it took the bureau's Seismology Center 102 seconds to fully grasp the magnitude of the earthquake and issue a notification, the officials said.
■ SOCIETY
Stray dog rescued
Animal rights activists in Kaohsiung City saved a stray dog whose head was trapped in a plastic container for the past month, cable news network TVBS reported. The network said an elderly woman reported the distressed animal earlier this month. She said the animal had avoided anyone trying to come near it. It was not immediately known how the dog got its head trapped in the container and how it managed to consume food and water. There have been increasing reports of animal cruelty, in which some dogs were found to have clusters of rubber bands cutting into their necks or had been partially skinned. Stray-care associations and animal rights activists urged the government to punish those who mistreat animals.
■ POLITICS
Chou, Lee row continues
A dispute between Taipei County Commissioner Chou Hsi-wei (周錫瑋) and Minister of the Interior Lee Yi-yang (李逸洋) continued yesterday, with Chou challenging Lee to debate the matter in public, only to have his challenge rebuffed by the minister. Lee said there was no point arguing with Chou in public, as the promotion and appointment of police officers lies squarely within the authority of the National Police Administration. As county commissioner, he said, Chou simply does not have the right to make promotions or appointments, irrespective of the fact that Taipei County was upgraded to a quasi-special municipality on Oct. 1. Chou, who tried to promote 140 middle-ranking police officers in his county only to have his promotions declared null and void by the ministry, argued that his power to control police appointments and promotions should be the same as that of his counterparts in the special municipalities of Taipei and Kaohsiung.
■ POLITICS
Councilors cross floor
The Tainan City People First Party's (PFP) council caucus will be consigned to history today as all three PFP councilors will return to the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT). PFP Tainan City councilors Lee Chin-chuan (李錦泉), Wang Chia-chen (王家貞) and Lin Mei-yan (林美燕) will formally announce their return to the KMT today. The PFP caucus discussed the return of its members to the KMT and decided to support KMT nominees for both legislative and presidential elections during a meeting last month. Although the PFP has asked the three councilors to delay their return to the KMT, Lee said they were left with no other choice, but stressed that they would still serve PFP supporters in their constituency. KMT membership will be officially restored to the three councilors late next month, Lee 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