MILITARY
Navy goes on publicity tour
After its annual two-month overseas mission, the Republic of China Navy Fleet of Friendship will sail around the country next month as part of a program to assist the public in learning more about the armed forces, military officials said on Sunday. The fleet, which left Kaohsiung early last month and visited Indonesia, the Solomon Islands and the Marshall Islands, is scheduled to return home at the end of this month, the officials said. Comprised this year of two frigates and one fast combat support ship, the fleet has been assembled annually since 1966 as part of a navy cadets’ pre-graduation training mission. Next month the fleet will call at ports including Kaohsiung, Tainan, Taichung, Keelung, Yilan, Hualien and Penghu, with one-day public events planned at each stop, officials said. Visitors will be able to board the ships and view their weapons, along with a performance by a cadet marching band, the navy band and honor guard unit, as well as view the marines’ combat skills.
HEALTH
Mental health now online
An online assessment for gauging mental health has been provided on the Web site of the Taipei City Government’s Department of Health, providing members of the public with an understanding of their mental health at the click of a mouse. After completing the assessment, users will be given details of their mental state and information on the nearest mental health institutions, the department said. It also plans to launch a mental health assessment app in July. In addition, a toll-free line, (02) 3393-7885, is available for anyone seeking help, the department said. The online mental health assessment service can be accessed at http://mental.health.gov.tw.
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