For those planning to head to the beach for a break from the summer heat will be happy to know that nine out of the country’s 10 most popular beaches have superior water quality, the Environmental Protection Administration (EPA) said yesterday.
The EPA said it conducted its fifth water quality survey of the year on July 12 and July 13 and found that New Jinshan Bathing Beach (新金山), Baishawan (白沙灣) and Fulong (福隆) in Taipei County, Tonghsiao (通霄) in Miaoli County, Shanyuan (杉原) in Taitung County, Sizihwan (西子灣) and Cijin beaches (旗津) in Kaohsiung City, Kenting Tiaoshih Recreational Seashore (墾丁跳石) in Pingtung County and Houhu (後湖) in Kinmen County had very good water quality, said Chu Yu-chi (朱雨其), head of the EPA’s department of environmental monitoring and information management division.
Following heavy rains in Hualien County, Cisingtan Beach (七星潭) was found to be unsuitable for swimming, Chu said.
“People should avoid going into the water for the next three to five days there,” he said.
The EPA rated water quality at the beaches according to the concentration of E. coli bacteria.
“In order for water to be suitable for swimming, it must have less than 1,000 colony-forming units [CFU] per 100mm of water,” Chu said.
E. coli is a common bacteria that is not necessarily harmful, but its presence normally indicates other, more dangerous bacteria can also be found in the water, Chu 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