The Taipei Municipal Institute for Animal Health yesterday fined a National Taiwan University (NTU) doctoral student NT$120,000 after he admitted to abandoning four cats he had adopted.
The student, surnamed Lee, is also suspected of abusing and killing two other kittens and is still under investigation.
Institute director Yen I-feng (嚴一峰) said Lee had violated the Animal Protection Act (動物保護法) by abandoning the four cats.
He was given a NT$30,000 fine for each of the cats.
The student could face a fine of between NT$100,000 and NT$500,000 and imprisonment for up to one year if found guilty of abusing and killing animals.
His name and photo could also be released if he is found guilty, Yen said.
The institute and prosecutors formed a joint investigation team to look into the cases.
Lee came under investigation after a number of animal rights advocates accused him in February of killing kittens by skinning them or throwing them off buildings.
They said that Lee, who lived in an NTU dormitory where pets are not allowed, had adopted at least six kittens from six different people since last year.
The bodies of several severely abused kittens were later discovered in the Shida Night Market (師大夜市) area.
Yen said the investigation team was still collecting evidence in the case.
The institute urged people seeking new owners for their pets to be vigilant about the background of the people that offer to take them.
The institute plans to set up a database of confirmed animal abusers who are barred from adopting animals, Yen 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