ECOLOGY
Gambling used as eco tool
In an effort to increase public awareness of the endangered black-faced spoonbill, Taijiang National Park has developed a contest that invites members of the public to place bets on the spoonbill’s migration to Taiwan this year. The contest, called “Happy Lottery,” is to be launched today. The first competition asks participants to forecast the arrival time, date and quantity of the first flock of spoonbills to arrive in the park’s Black-faced Spoonbill Conservation Area. The second competition will be won by whoever can most accurately predict the total number of birds in the area in November, which is when conservation groups usually conduct their annual census of the bird. The contest will accept submissions from today until one week before the November census.Prizes will include scientific gadgets used by ecologists. Members of the public can place their wagers at www.tjnp.gov.tw.
AVIATION
Delivery service started
Beginning on Thursday next week, passengers flying from Taiwan no longer have to worry about throwing carry-on items away at the airport security check. They now have a second choice — to send them home. Taiwan Taoyuan International Airport and the Aviation Police Office will offer a service that allows passengers to send items that are prohibited on planes, such as knives and nail clippers, to a designated address in Taiwan. In the past, misunderstandings have arisen when passengers have insisted on keeping banned items that they claim to have special meaning for them, the Aviation Police Office said. It was decided to introduce the delivery service, which will be paid for by the passengers, to avoid any unpleasantness.
ZOOLOGY
Rare horses doing well
Taipei Zoo officials said on Wednesday that the keeper charged with taking care of the zoo’s wild horses has an uncanny knack for dealing with them. Przewalski’s horse, commonly known as the Asian wild horse or the Mongolian wild horse, is such a handful that even routine checkups, vaccinations and medical treatment can be fraught with difficulty, officials said. However, senior keeper Hu Chung-yuan (胡鍾源), who has 13 years of experience, is able to deal with all the zoo’s horses except the oldest stallion. There are only about 1,500 of these endangered horses left in the world, the zoo said, which is home to 10 of them.
HEALTH
Medicine wrongly stored
An informal poll conducted by the Department of Health has found that 40 percent of respondents did not store medicine properly or know how to dispose correctly of unused drugs. The survey found that respondents often stored their medication in kitchens, bathrooms or bedrooms instead of cool and dry places as recommended, said Tsai Hsueh-yung (戴雪詠), a section chief responsible for drug safety assessment under the Food and Drug Administration. Tsai said the most important principle in storing medicine is to keep it in a dark, dry drawer or cabinet away from heat, light and moisture. Getting rid of unused drugs and pills was another area in which people lacked basic knowledge, the survey found. Tsai said that the best option for most medications is incineration, but special drugs, including those prescribed to cancer patients, should be returned to the hospital or clinic for proper disposal. Tsai said it was important not to flush them because the drugs would dissolve and contaminate the water.
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