■ AGRICULTURE
GPV vaccinations set
The Changhua County Government has received 5,600 doses of vaccine against the goat pox virus (GPV) and will soon begin to immunize goats raised on farms throughout the county, the Animal Disease Control Center said. Priority will be given to goats located within 1km of farms where GPV outbreaks have been reported recently, center director Kuo Chou-che (郭丑哲) said. More than 3,000 goats on 28 farms have been slaughtered since the first cases of pox were confirmed, but this has not stopped the spread of the virus, said Tung Meng-chih (董孟治), secretary-general of the center. The center and experts in the field have decided that all goats nationwide should be vaccinated against the virus, Tung said. The vaccination program should be completed by the middle of next month and hopefully the outbreak will be brought under control by the end of the month, he said.
■ POLITICS
Chen rules out tax hikes
Kaohsiung City Government yesterday dismissed media speculation that it plans to tax hot spring businesses in Kaohsiung County after the city completes its merger with the county in December. City Finance Bureau Director-General Lei Chung-dar (雷仲達) told reporters that Kaohsiung Mayor Chen Chu (陳菊) did not intend to levy new taxes or charge residents of the city new mandatory fees. “The city government absolutely does not have any plans to levy a hot spring tax, particularly because the county’s hot springs are mostly located in areas traumatized by the flooding in August last year and remain under reconstruction,” Lei said. Chu plans to improve the city’s finances by stimulating local businesses and fighting for more administrative funding from the central government, Lei said.
■ TOURISM
More bus routes for tourists
The Tourism Bureau said it is pushing for the launch of 11 new tour bus routes next month. While most existing tour bus routes are in western Taiwan, six of the new routes will be on the east coast, including one to Taroko Gorge, the bureau said. Ten routes were launched in April to popular attractions such as Sun Moon Lake (日月潭), Alishan and Kenting (墾丁), it said. The tour buses link major tourist attractions with train and high speed rail stations so travelers can enjoy a seamless connection, the bureau said. At least one large tour bus is dispatched every hour on each route during operating hours. The bureau said it hoped the increase in bus routes would also encourage people to take public transport instead of their cars, thereby easing traffic congestion during holidays.
■ CRIME
Taiwanese killed in US
A Taiwanese father and son were killed when they fought back against gunmen robbing their supermarket in Washington, Representative to the US Jason Yuan (袁健生) said on Thursday. Taoyuan County-born Chih Ming-kun (池明坤) and his son Chih Li-jen (池立仁), were shot dead. The robbery occurred at 2:30pm on Thursday at the Chih family’s Lida Wholesales. Metropolitan Police Department Chief Cathy Lanier arrived at the scene to oversee the investigation, the Central News Agency reported yesterday. Yuan said the police department would provide grief counseling and consolation funds for the families of the victims. Taiwan’s representative office urged the police to arrest the gunmen as soon as possible.
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