SAFETY
Plastic utensils to be labeled
Reusable plastic food containers, including bowls, plates and saucers, are to have clearer labels indicating their substances, heat resistance range, microwavability and other product details, the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) said yesterday. To help consumers better understand the product quality of plastic food utensils, containers and packaging, the administration in 2011 announced that reusable plastic water bottles and cups, lunch boxes, containers used to preserve food, as well as feeding bottles must display detailed manufacturing information, in accordance with the Act Governing Food Sanitation (食品衛生管理法). The FDA has proposed to extend the application of the act to include plastic bowls, plates and saucers, and the amendments will be officially announced in 60 days.
SPORTS
American wins bike race
American Lee Rodgers won the Climbing Taiwan-Never Stop bike race on Sunday, finishing the 71km race on a winding, mostly uphill, highway in 3 hours, 2 minutes, 59 seconds. More than 1,100 cyclists, including 19 from Spain, Australia, New Zealand, Malaysia, Germany, Italy and the US, competed in the event, also known as Explore TATAKA. The race, which was held along Provincial Highway 21, began at 243m above sea level and ended at an altitude of 2,610m in Yushan National Park. Rodgers won a NT$5,000 first prize. Chiu Min-jie clocked the best time by a Taiwanese cyclist, finishing in 3:06.22 to take fifth place. Three other foreign competitors finished in second to fourth places. Nantou County Chief Chen Chen-sheng (陳振盛) said that the highway, one of Taiwan’s most scenic routes, has become very popular with cyclists who are looking for a challenge.
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