ENVIRONMENT
Two sea turtles rehabilitated
Two injured hawksbill sea turtles recently captured off Yilan County were released on Monday after rehabilitation at the National Taiwan Ocean University. Animal and Plant Disease Control officials in Yilan County said they received a report on Sept. 13 of an injured hawksbill turtle in open water off the coast. Upon capture, it was found to weigh 2.44kg. It was suffering from an injured front flipper. On Oct. 8, a group of fishermen rescued another young hawksbill, which had deep wounds on its right back flipper, the disease control center said, adding that it weighed 815g. The turtles began to show signs of recovery after passing plastic, fishing net and dead insects, said Cheng I-jiunn (程一駿), a professor of the university’s Institute of Marine Biology, who cared for them. The endangered animals were treated with antibiotics by National Taiwan University Veterinary Hospital before being returned to the sea, he said.
FISHERIES
Great white shark caught
A large great white shark was caught on Saturday by fishermen from Yilan County, which is a popular surfing destination in Taiwan. The shark, 6m long and weighing 1,750kg, was netted off the county’s Toucheng coast. It was sold for NT$150,000 (US$5,110) at a local market. One of the 10 fishermen who caught the fish said it was so big that it took them more than an hour to haul it aboard. “I haven’t caught sharks like that around here for years,” said the fisherman, surnamed Cheng (鄭), who had caught an 800kg shark in the area about three years ago. Cheng said he would like to continue netting sharks because this prevented surfers from getting hurt during their stay at the popular tourist destination.
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
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
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