AVIATION
Hawk strike grounds plane
A bird strike forced a China Eastern Airlines flight bound for Shanghai to make an emergency return to Taiwan Taoyuan International Airport yesterday, the airline said. Flight MU5008, which departed Taoyuan at 4:26pm for Shanghai Pudong International Airport, collided with a hawk shortly after takeoff, the airline said. The 299 passengers and crew members onboard the Airbus A330 aircraft were all unhurt, the airline said. The flight landed safely and the passengers were transferred to another airplane that departed for Pudong later in the day, the airline said.
HEALTH
New enterovirus cases cited
The Centers for Diseases Control (CDC) yesterday reported seven new enterovirus cases, urging parents to pay attention to outbreaks at home or on visits overseas as the annual peak period for the infection starts. Six of the seven patients, all children between four weeks and 13 years old, were treated and discharged from hospital, CDC Deputy Director General Chou Jih-haw (周志浩) told a press briefing. The seventh child is still in hospital, he added. “We discovered that a four-month-old boy from southern Taiwan caught the virus in China during a trip there with his family,” Chou said. As of Monday, the number of serious enterovirus cases this year had reached 96, with one death recorded, Chou said. The fatal case was a five-month old boy who died late last month of enterovirus 71, a virulent form of the virus, he said. Immediate medical attention should be sought if children develop symptoms of drowsiness, fever, weakness, muscle spasms, vomiting or heart palpitations, he added.
EMPLOYMENT
Most Taiwanese say job ideal
Nearly two-thirds of Taiwanese say their jobs are ideal, a higher percentage than South Koreans, a recent Gallup poll found. Asked if their job was ideal, 65 percent of respondents in Taiwan, 63 percent of those surveyed in Japan, 61 percent of those polled in Hong Kong and 53 percent of respondents in South Korea gave affirmative answers, the survey showed. Although China has one of the lowest unemployment rates in Asia, at less than 5 percent, its workers were among the least likely to say their jobs are ideal, the poll found. Fewer than half of the Chinese respondents (49 percent) said their job was “ideal,” putting China second to last in Gallup’s list of 22 Asian economies, one spot behind Sri Lanka (51 percent) and one spot ahead of Vietnam (48 percent). Taiwan ranked 13th of the 22 economies. Respondents in Laos (90 percent) and the Philippines (81 percent) had the greatest sense that they were doing ideal jobs.
FINANCE
Debt highest in Kaohsiung
The average per capita debt in Greater Kaohsiung at the end of last month was the highest among local governments at NT$76,700, while outlying Kinmen and Lienchiang counties reported zero debt, according to data released by local governments yesterday. Kaohsiung had long-term debt of NT$192.7 billion (US$6.4 billion) and short-term debt of NT$20.2 billion, according to the city government. The city also had self-financing debt of NT$29.26 billion, which is not factored into the per capita debt calculation. On average, each of the city’s 2.78 million residents owed NT$76,700, the city’s figures showed. Aside from the debt-free Kinmen and Lienchiang countyies, Chiayi City had lowest average per capita debt at NT$9,000.
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