■HEALTH
Workers get food poisoning
More than 20 foreign workers employed at the Dali Industrial Park in Taichung County were treated at a hospital for food poisoning late on Wednesday night, the park administration said yesterday. A steady stream of foreign workers began arriving at Dali City’s Jen-Ai Hospital emergency room from 11:30pm with symptoms such as abdominal cramps, nausea, vomiting and diarrhea, according to the park administration. Four of the workers whose symptoms were more serious were hospitalized for further observation, while most of the others were sent home after receiving treatment, the hospital said. The workers said they began experiencing the symptoms after eating Thai-style boxed lunches at the industrial park. The hospital said that it has collected food samples and is conducting tests to identify the source of the suspected poisoning.
■HEALTH
CDC eases vaccine worries
The Centers for Disease Control (CDC) assured the public yesterday that government-funded chicken pox vaccines are in sufficient supply amid an ongoing outbreak of the disease among schoolchildren. The recent delivery of 50,000 doses of the vaccine to Taiwan is expected to meet local demand for the next six months, and the CDC is currently procuring more vaccine to cope with the need, CDC Deputy Director-General Chou Chih-hao (周志浩) said. Since January 2004, the government has provided free inoculation against chicken pox for infants who have reached 12 months. However, a global shortage of the vaccine since last year has forced the government to delay the age for inoculation to 15 months. According to Chou, a total of 5,900 chicken pox cases were recorded around the country between January and last month, up 11 percent compared with the same period last year, when 5,300 cases were recorded.
■POLITICS
Chen Chu stands firm
Kaohsiung Mayor Chen Chu (陳菊) reiterated yesterday that she will attend an upcoming international tourism expo in Beijing only if she could do so in her capacity as mayor. Chen said during a question-and-answer session at the city council that she would refuse to take part in the expo to be held later this month if the Chinese government asks her make the trip in a private capacity. Chen’s remarks came amid reports that an increasing number of local city and county chiefs in Taiwan are planning to visit China following the May 20 inauguration of the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) government, which is seeking to build closer trade ties with China.
■POLITICS
No ruling on elections: CEC
The Central Election Commission (CEC) has yet to decide whether to combine three elections, scheduled to occur in the next two years, into one to save costs, CEC Chairman Chang Cheng-hsiung (張政雄) said yesterday. “Whether to combine the elections into one will require gauging public opinion,” Chang said. He was referring to the city and county chief elections late next year and city and county council, and township and village chief elections in 2010. Chang disputed Minister of the Interior Liao Liao-yi’s (廖了以) recent remarks at the legislature that his ministry would decide in mid-October whether to combine the elections, as it is stipulated that related authorities should announce a decision one year prior to the elections.
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