ENVIRONMENT
Quake rattles offshore isle
Orchid Island (蘭嶼) yesterday felt slight vibrations in the wake of a magnitude 5.7 earthquake that was centered near Ishigaki, an island belonging to Japan’s Okinawa Prefecture. Orchid Island, off the nation’s southeastern coast, experienced an intensity 2 shake on a seven-tier scale. The Central Weather Bureau’s Seismological Center said the quake occurred at 9:11am. Hualien, Changhua, Yunlin, Nantou and Chiayi counties also recorded a light intensity 1 shake from the quake, the center said.
SOCIETY
Traffic accidents rise
Drunk driving was the main cause of traffic accidents leading to fatalities at the crash site or within 24 hours, the Ministry of the Interior said yesterday while unveiling statistics on traffic accidents that resulted in casualties last year. The statistics showed that 199,903 traffic accidents were recorded last year, up 8.2 percent from the previous year. The number of people injured or who died more than 24 hours later increased by 8.3 percent, while cases of injury or death within a 24-hour period fell by 2.1 percent. The most common time of day for traffic accidents was between 6pm and 8pm, with 12.4 percent of accidents occurring during this time. This was followed by the period between 4pm and 6pm, with 10.14 percent of accidents, showing that crashes are more frequent during rush hour.
HEALTH
CDC confirms cholera case
The Centers for Disease Control (CDC) on Friday confirmed the first imported case of cholera this year and advised people to take extra precautions when traveling to Southeast Asian countries which have a high prevalence of the disease. A 29-year-old woman from the south of the nation was suspected of having contracted cholera after experiencing painless diarrhea and vomiting after she returned from a four-day trip to Sabah in Malaysia. The health authorities said grilled fish and shrimp she ate on a local beach could have been the cause of transmission. She sought medical help on April 1, one day after her return, and was confirmed to be suffering from cholera on April 12, according to the center, adding that the patient recovered and that her travel companions and two relatives living with her did not have any symptoms. Although imported cases of cholera, a bacterial disease usually spread through contaminated water or food, are rare in Taiwan, the center urged the public to avoid raw food and to drink only bottled water when traveling in areas prone to cholera.
ENVIRONMENT
Forested globe unveiled
A 5m tall transparent globe with a mini tropical rain forest planted inside was unveiled at the Mitsukoshi Plaza in Taipei’s Xinyi District (信義) yesterday in celebration of Earth Day on Friday. Aimed at raising the public’s environmental awareness, the installment, titled “Listen to the Earth,” also emits the sounds of Taiwan’s nature. Lamech (藍米克), the grand prize winner of the Taipei International Flora Expo’s flower design competition, designed the globe and said he used mahogany trees, ferns and palm trees to build up the image. Taipei City Mayor Hau Lung-bin (郝龍斌), who took part in the event, said that members of the public should try to listen to nature more as well as their hearts, and to take action in their day-to-day lives to help create a more sustainable environment. A fundraising event was also held, with all the proceeds going to the non-profit Taiwan Environmental Information Association, the event organizer 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