■HEALTH
Subsidy benefits children
Some 2,000 children have benefited from an incentive program launched by the Taipei City Government in 2007 that offers medical subsidies to children under six who have at least two older siblings, a city health official said yesterday. Under the program, parents with households registered in the city can apply for special certificates for their third child and any children born after that, the official said. Children with the cards are eligible for subsidies of NT$50 to NT$80 for outpatient or emergency clinic registration and other subsidies for hospitalization, emergency outpatient treatment and additional medical services. They are also eligible for education grants, the official said.
■SOCIETY
Annette Lu attends forum
Former vice president Annette Lu (呂秀蓮) will attend a woman’s forum in Taipei today in her capacity as the chairwoman of the Taiwan Federation of Business and Professional Women. Founded in 1930, Business and Professional Women (BPW) International has consultative status with the UN’s Economic and Social Council and participatory status with the Council of Europe. BPW has 38 federations and 51 associated clubs in 91 countries and five continents. It’s aim is to develop the professional and leadership potential of women at all levels. Lu established the first Taipei branch in 1973 and five more in Taipei, Taoyuan, Taichung, Kaohsiung County and Kaohsiung City in 2007.
■SOCIETY
Right to breastfeed in public
The legislature yesterday completed the preliminary review of a bill stipulating that nursing mothers have the right to breastfeed in any public space. The bill would require all government agencies and state-run enterprises with floor space of more than 500m²; train stations, airport terminals and transit centers of more than 1,000m² and department stores with floor areas totaling 10,000m² to have designated breastfeeding rooms. Chiou Shu-ti, director general of the Bureau of Health Promotion, said that by establishing breastfeeding areas, government agencies would set an example for other places. The draft regulation stipulates that any of the above-mentioned areas that fail to provide breastfeeding facilities would be subject to a fine of between NT$6,000 and NT$30,000.
■DIPLOMACY
Taiwan attends OIE session
A delegation headed by a top Council of Agriculture official attended the opening of the 78th World Organization for Animal Health (OIE) General Session in Paris on Sunday. Taiwan, a formal member of the organization, sent a six-member delegation led by Huang Kuo-ching, deputy director of the Bureau of Animal and Plant Health Inspection and Quarantine. The five-day conference will focus on international safety standards for world trade in animals and animal products and the prevention and control of animal diseases. During the opening ceremony, members of the organization reiterated the importance of global cooperation in the fight against animal-human disease transmission and pledged closer collaboration with the WHO and the UN Food and Agriculture Organization. Taiwan’s representative to France, Michel Lu (呂慶龍), said that Taiwan’s proactive participation in international organization will allow it to contribute further to the international community.
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