SOCIETY
Poo collectors may win big
New Taipei City (新北市) will run an innovative scheme to keep its streets clean by encouraging residents to collect dog excrement for a chance to win gold. Starting in July, the city government will offer residents who collect canines’ waste the chance to enter a lucky draw, local media reported yesterday. Those taking part in the scheme will be given one lottery ticket in exchange for the dog waste they collect for a chance to enter the draw, which has a top prize of a gold ingot worth NT$60,000, it said. The scheme ran for the first time in June last year and proved a success attracting more than 20,000 participants, according to the city government. A lucky draw was conducted in November last year in which three prizes of gold ingots, each with different worth, were given away.
AGRICULTURE
Yunlin bird flu probed
All chickens at a farm in Yunlin County were culled after it was confirmed to have been hit by a highly pathogenic form of the H5N2 avian influenza virus, agricultural officials said yesterday. The farm and surrounding area were disinfected after 14,000 chickens from the farm were culled, officials from the Bureau of Animal and Plant Health Inspection and Quarantine said. A clinical investigation and epidemiological sampling within a radius of 3km of the farm would continue, but all fowl in neighboring areas have so far been found to be healthy and no suspected avian flu cases were reported, they said. A Yunlin agricultural official said on Friday that more than 13 million chickens are currently being raised on more than 900 farms in the county. The first outbreak of the highly pathogenic H5N2 bird flu was recorded on Jan. 9 at a farm in Changhua County. Since then, two other egg and poultry farms in Changhua and one each in Greater Tainan and Pingtung County have been hit by a similar virus.
CULTURE
Hakka park opens in Tongluo
The Hakka Cultural Park Miaoli was officially inaugurated in Miaoli County’s Tongluo Township (銅鑼) yesterday with a ribbon-cutting ceremony attended by Premier Sean Chen (陳冲), Hakka Affairs Council Minister Huang Yu-chen (黃玉振) and Miaoli County Commissioner Liu Cheng-hung (劉政鴻). The establishment of the park makes it the second central government-run Hakka cultural park in the country. The other one is in Greater Kaohsiung. According to the council, the Hakka Cultural Park Miaoli is not merely a park, but rather, it is part of the Taiwan Hakka Culture Development Center, which displays elements of Hakka culture not only native to Taiwan, but also from around the world.
IMMIGRATION
Illegals feted to Mother’s Day
Illegal immigrants being held at a National Immigration Agency detention center in Nantou County celebrated Mother’s Day with a local saxophone ensemble yesterday. Officials at the center, who organized the concert, also presented carnations to more than 60 mothers waiting to be sent back to their native countries. The band, based in Greater Taichung, played Taiwanese music and folk songs from Indonesia, Vietnam, Thailand, Philippines and other Southeast Asian countries. The detainees, including two women who are being held there with small children, said they were moved by the songs and the kindness of Taiwanese. As the final stop in Taiwan, the detention center tries to provide the detainees a good diet, a pleasant environment and entertainment to ease their anxiety before being deported, officials 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