■ HEALTH
Flu vigilance still needed
President Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九) yesterday called for the public to remain alert against HINI and praised the Department of Health for its work since the emergence of the virus last year. In a conversation with Department of Health Minister Yaung Chih-liang (楊志良), posted on the president’s weekly online journal, Ma urged the public to stay on guard against the potentially fatal disease. Yaung said that among the 32 members and observers at the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, Taiwan had the third-lowest H1N1-related mortality rate. Yaung said Taiwan’s 70 percent H1N1 immunization rate among school children was also the highest in the world.
■ POLITICS
Tsai not eyeing Sinbei run
Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) Chairperson Tsai Ing-wen (蔡英文) yesterday once again said she was not interested in running in Sinbei City (新北市, the upgraded Taipei County) race. This came after DPP Legislator Chen Ming-wen (陳明文), a member of the party’s nine-person committee in charge of nominations for the year-end special municipality elections, told media on Thursday that most committee members believed the party had the best chance of winning the elections if it nominated former premier Su Tseng-chang (蘇貞昌) for the Taipei City race, Tsai for Sinbei City and former premier Frank Hsieh (謝長廷) in Greater Taichung. The party subsequently issued a statement dismissing Chen’s remarks as his own opinion and not that of the committee’s.
■ FISHERIES
Fishing boat off course
Ministry of Foreign Affairs Spokesman Henry Chen (陳銘政) said yesterday the ministry’s office in Indonesia had asked the Indonesian government for assistance in searching for a Taiwanese fishing boat. The boat, with a Taiwanese captain and eight Indonesian crew members, left for waters south of Sri Lanka on Sept. 21 last year, said Tsai Bao-hsing (蔡寶興), director-general of a fishermen’ association in Siaoliouciou (小琉球), Pingtung County. The ship was picked up by radar yesterday, but was heading eastward toward Indonesia at high speed, Tsai said. Captain Chen Ying-chung (陳盈忠) hasn’t answered phone calls from his wife since Wednesday, and Tsai and Chen’s family are concerned the ship may have been hijacked.
■ TRAVEL
Flights to east to increase
Three Taiwanese air carriers are to begin providing chartered flight services from Hualien and Taitung cities to cities in China and Hong Kong, the Tourism Bureau said. The services will allow Chinese tourists to travel direct by air to scenic eastern Taiwan rather than arriving on the west coast and traveling by land. This is expected to increase the variety and choice of tours in Taiwan, bureau officials said. Taipei-based Mandarin Airlines will launch its maiden chartered flight from Nanjing to Hualien on May 7 and its first flight from Nanjing to Taitung on May 14, the bureau said. Uni Airways will offer its first chartered flight from Xiamen to Taitung on May 5 and Trans Asia Airways will fly for the first time from Hangzhou to Hualien on May 14. In terms of the Hong Kong-eastern Taiwan chartered flight services, the bureau said Mandarin Airlines would launch a flight between Hong Kong and Taitung on May 15 and another on May 18, as well as a flight between Hong Kong and Hualien on May 21 and another on May 25.
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