■SOCIETY
Beef shipments pass test
The shipment of US bone-in beef that arrived in Taiwan on Friday obtained import inspection certificates from the Bureau of Standards, Meteorology and Inspection, the Bureau of Animal and Plant Health Inspection, and Quarantine and Customs yesterday. The 163kg of beef products, shipped in six packages, will hit the market soon, customs officials said. The shipments were approved based on the principles of “three controls, five certifications.” The three controls refer to the controls on the beef products at the source, at borders and in markets. The five certifications are related to verifying US documentation, checking that shipments are marked with detailed product information, opening a high percentage of the containers to check the product, conducting food safety tests and being able to obtain immediate information on any suspected problems. Another shipment is scheduled to arrive on Friday.
■HEALTH
Preserved fruit fail tests
Nearly 30 percent of dried fruit and pickled vegetables on the market do not meet safety standards because they contain excessive levels of additives, a Taipei City health official said yesterday. The city’s Department of Health recently conducted random inspections of 97 samples of dried fruit and pickled and dehydrated vegetable products sold in hypermarkets, traditional markets and the Dihua Street Commercial Circle, said Chiang Yu-mei (姜郁美), director of the Food and Drug Division. Twenty-six of the samples, or 26.8 percent, failed to pass food safety tests, she said, while 11 were improperly labeled. Seventeen of the 51 samples of dried fruit — or 33 percent — did not meet standards because they contained excessive amounts of artificial sweetener or cyclamate, Chiang said. One manufactured in Changhua County was found to contain cyclamate levels 20 times higher than the permissible amount, she said. Nine of the 35 pickled vegetable samples failed because they contained excessive levels of benzoic acid. In the case of five manufacturers, it was the second straight year their products failed to meet safety standards, so the health department will ask them to pull the products from store shelves, Chiang said.
■SOCIETY
Taiwan’s ranking rises
Taiwan inched forward in the latest annual quality-of-life index published by European travel magazine International Living. In this year’s issue, released last week, the magazine ranked Taiwan 57th among the 192 countries surveyed — an improvement of two places. Taiwan ranked above Singapore and China, but below Japan and South Korea, while France placed first. Taiwan garnered high marks for its environment, healthcare and freedoms, but lost out because of the high cost of living and dismal economy. The publication also considers leisure, culture and climate, using an analysis of data from official sources, including government Web sites, the WHO and the UN.
■SOCIETY
Zoo ready for lemurs
Kaohsiung City’s Shoushan Zoo is ready to welcome lemurs from Madagascar, spokesman Chang Po-yu (張博宇) said yesterday. Chang said the zoo had prepared an area to accommodate lemurs after it completed its renovation last year. The former speaker of the Madagascar Congress, Voninahitsy Jean Eugene, told Kaohsiung Mayor Chen Chu (陳菊) during a visit on Friday that he would help the city import lemurs. Chen told him that Taiwanese had developed an interest in the animals because of the animated film Madagascar.
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