HEALTH
CDC warns on China travel
The Centers for Disease Control (CDC) yesterday urged travelers to China to stay “alert” following the discovery of two new human cases of the H7N9 virus. The two cases, one in Zhejiang Province and the other in Guangdong Province, were confirmed by Chinese health authorities on Tuesday. They were the third and fourth to be reported since the virus re-emerged last month, the CDC said. Since the novel strain of bird flu was first discovered in China in March this year, 138 human infections have been reported in 10 provinces and two cities, with 45 dying from the virus, CDC Deputy Director-General Chuang Jen-hsiang (莊仁祥) said. The CDC is maintaining its travel health advisory at “Level 2 Alert” for Zhejiang and Guangdong, and at the lower “Level 1 Watch” for the rest of China, he said.
CHINA AFFAIRS
MAC to promote exchanges
The Mainland Affairs Council (MAC) will push for exchanges of visits between the heads of the council and its Chinese counterpart, the Taiwan Affairs Office, and establish a regular communication mechanism, MAC Chairman Wang Yu-chi (王郁琦) said in a report to a legislative committee yesterday. The council will also push for follow-up talks on the Economic Cooperation Framework Agreement (ECFA) signed in 2010, and for better conditions for Chinese students studying in Taiwan, he said. Asked about Association for Relations Across the Taiwan Straits Chairman Chen De-ming’s (陳德銘) visit to Taiwan later this month, Wang said he currently has no plans to meet him, but if they do, he hoped that “both sides can move forward on the basis established” at the APEC forum. During the APEC meet last month, Wang and TAO Director Zhang Zhijun (張志軍) addressed each other by their official titles.
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