■HEALTH
Milk powder tested for free
In a bid to ease concern about toxic milk powder bought from China’s Sanlu Group, Taipei City’s Health Department said yesterday that it was providing free testing of milk powders for Taipei residents until Friday next week. Residents can take milk powder to the department’s examination room at 111, Shipai Rd Sec 2, Beitou District (北投), between 9am and 4pm. The office will be open for examinations today and tomorrow. People can also call the examination room at (02) 2828-0102, extension 2109, or call an around-the-clock citizen’s hotline at 1999 for more information. Chiang Yu-mei (姜郁美), director of the Food and Drug Division of the city’s health department, said the department has been receiving more than 1,000 calls every day from people concerned about the safety of their milk powder.
■SOCIETY
Tours of old Taipei offered
The Taipei City Government invited residents to gain a better understanding of the city’s historical sites and their cultural significance with six guided tours tomorrow. The tours, presented by the Taipei City Archives, will introduce sites including the Taipei 228 Park, the North Gate, the West Gate and Zhongshan Hall in Zhongzheng District (中正). People interested in joining the tours should gather in front of the National Taiwan Museum at 8:30am tomorrow. A historical monument festival will start at 2pm tomorrow at the Museum of Contemporary Art Taipei with booths featuring traditional crafts, music and activities such as whipping tops, flour dolls and paper cutting art. Participants can win free bags and enjoy free beer, Taipei City Department of Cultural Affairs division chief Teng Wen-tsung (鄧文宗) said.
■HEALTH
DOH reassures on deli meat
No contaminated ready-to-eat deli meat products from Canada’s Maple Leaf Foods Co have been imported, the Department of Health (DOH) said on Thursday. Hsieh Ting-hung (謝定宏), deputy director of the department’s Bureau of Food Sanitation, said that while local companies have imported 432 tonnes of pork from the Canadian company this year, “none of them have imported any of the company’s cooked meat products.” Hsieh made the remarks after various packaged cooked meat products from Maple Leaf’s Toronto factory were found to have been contaminated with Listeria monocytogenes, resulting in 16 fatalities in Canada. Consumption of food contaminated with Listeria monocytogenes may cause listeriosis, which poses a particular risk to the elderly, the very young, pregnant women and people with weakened immune systems.
■CRIME
Two drug suspects nabbed
The Criminal Investigation Bureau announced yesterday that a police task force had arrested two suspected drug traffickers returning from Cambodia a day earlier and seized 835g of pure heroin. A spokesman for the bureau said the task force — formed after police received tips about a cross-border drug trafficking ring — consisted of officers from the bureau’s third brigade and police units in Keelung and in Kaohsiung. After learning that the suspected ring leader, a 45-year-old man surnamed Hsiang, went to Cambodia again with his girlfriend from China on Sept. 10, the task force began to place them under surveillance. Upon their return at Kaohsiung International Airport on Thursday, the couple were subjected to a body search, leading to the discovery of 835g of heroin in the heels of the shoes of Hsiang’s girlfriend surnamed Li.
■EVENTS
Changhua to hold carnival
Changhua County Government will hold an eight-day carnival during which images of Matsu, the goddess of the sea, will make a pilgrimage around the county. The carnival — organized by several local temples — will be held from Sept. 27 to Oct. 4. The highlight will be more than 10 Matsu statues from the temples touring the county together for the first time, officials from the county’s Cultural Affairs Bureau said. The carnival will also showcase the county’s customs, religion, commerce and culture, Changhua County Commissioner Cho Po-yuan (卓伯源) said.
■DIPLOMACY
Nation to ink Belize oil deal
Taiwanese Ambassador to Belize Joseph Shih (石定) said yesterday that CPC Corp, Taiwan (台灣中油) would sign an oil exploration agreement with the Central American country on Sept. 29, further strengthening bilateral cooperation between the two countries. The state-run CPC is the nation’s biggest oil refiner. Speaking at a reception for diplomats returning for consultations in Taipei, Shih said that relations with Belize, dubbed the “Kuwait of Central America” by US media, “are moving from more traditional agricultural and economic relations to multi-dimensional cooperation.” Taiwan and Belize will sign the oil exploration agreement as soon as both sides agree on the final wording, and the details will be made public after the agreement is signed, Shih said.
■EVENTS
MOEA sponsors MIT sales
The Ministry of Economic Affairs sponsored a promotional activity in Taichung yesterday to help local manufacturers of towels, socks and footwear sell their products. Twenty-three manufacturers took part in the activity, which was held at a department store in downtown Taichung, to promote “Made In Taiwan” (MIT) products. Taichung Deputy Mayor Hsiao Chia-chi (蕭家旗) urged the public to buy MIT products, while touting their good quality and reasonable prices.
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
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
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