■WEATHE
Tropical storm approaching
The Central Weather Bureau said yesterday that a low-pressure system near Taiwan had developed into a storm at 8am yesterday. At press time, the center of the storm was located 1,150km east of Manila. Tropical Storm Nuri, meaning “parrot” in Malay, was moving northwest at a speed of 26km per hour and was headed toward Taiwan, the bureau said. Whether the storm would have a direct impact on the country will be determined by Thursday, when the storm was expected to move closer to the nation, said Daniel Wu (吳德榮), director of the bureau’s forecast center. Wu added that the storm’s structure would determine the direction of its movement. It would continue to move northwesterly if the structure was solid, but would move north if its structure was loose, he said.
■SOCIETY
Maltese dog exorcised
A Maltese dog in Taichung that became ill after urinating near a ghost-money burner was miraculously “cured” after going through a religious ritual at a local temple, local online news outlet NowNews reported on Sunday. Its owner, Chien Li-wen (簡麗文), was quoted by NowNews as saying that her dog “suddenly screamed for no reason and began shaking and would not eat or drink” after urinating near a ghost-money burner. Chien took the Maltese to several veterinarians, but none could tell her what was wrong with the dog. She then took the dog to a local temple, where the borough chief and temple master Tseng Shan (曾善) said that the dog’s belly had been poked by an immortal to punish it for urinating by the ghost-money burner, the report said. After the temple master chanted Taoist chants and performed some simple rituals, the Maltese recovered and is back to normal, the report said.
■GOVERNMENT
Overseas recruitment on
The Executive Yuan’s overseas science talent recruit group left on Saturday for a 10-day recruitment drive in North America, visiting places such as Silicon Valley, California; Raleigh, North Carolina; Boston; Seattle; and Toronto. The recruitment, which is cosponsored by the National Science Council and the Ministry of Economic Affairs in collaboration with 37 private and public enterprises, will offer 1,350 jobs in an array of science and technology fields, including technical development managerial roles, system software engineers, senior IC design engineers and pharmaceutical research and development personnel. For more information, visit hirecruit.nat.gov.tw.
■HEALTH
Doctor talks hair loss
Seventy percent of patients who suffered from hair loss waited for up to one year and spent an average of NT$7,500 (US$246) before seeking treatment, a dermatologist said yesterday. Huang Yao-li (黃耀立) of Chang Gung Memorial Hospital cited figures compiled by the Taiwan Dermatological Association, which surveyed 328 patients this year. Huang said that people who find 40 or more strands of hair on the pillow in the morning or lose 50 or more strands when they wash their hair may be suffering from androgenetic alopecia, or male pattern baldness. He urged people who are bothered by hair loss to see a doctor to determine the cause of the problem. If the hair loss is caused by stress, delaying treatment could result in complete baldness, he said. If the problem is male pattern baldness, then long-term treatment would be required while the patient is still young, he 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