HEALTH
CDC raises alert for Anhui
The Centers for Disease Control (CDC) raised the travel alert for China’s Anhui Province to level 2 yesterday after two new human infections of H7N9 avian influenza were reported there. Authorities confirmed that two men — a 48-year-old in Ma-anshan and a 75-year-old in Wuhu — have contracted the strain, the first H7N9 human infections in the province so far this year. Both cases were confirmed on Monday and the men remain in critical condition, the CDC said. Level 2 alerts are also in place for Shanghai, Jiangsu and Zhejiang in eastern China; Fujian, Guangdong, Guizhou and Yunnan in the south and southwest; Jiangxi in northern China; and Xinjiang in the west, the CDC said. All other Chinese provinces and cities are under level 1 advisories, it added. Travelers to China should avoid contact with live or dead birds, pay attention to personal hygiene and seek medical attention immediately if they develop symptoms such as a fever or a cough, the CDC said.
HEALTH
Woman falls to her death
A Japanese woman died after falling from a building in Taipei yesterday in an apparent suicide, police said following an initial investigation. The woman in her 30s was found lying on the ground after falling from the seventh floor of the building, police said. She had been working in Taiwan for more than a month. The woman’s neighbors called the police after they heard a loud sound, went out and found the woman on the ground, police said, declining to divulge her name. She was pronounced dead after paramedics rushed her to the hospital. Citing the initial findings, police said they had ruled out the possibility of homicide. The woman lived alone in the building from which she fell, police said, adding that no suicide note was found.
TRANSPORT
Web traffic hobbles YouBike
Public bike rental system YouBike went down yesterday at 10:30am because of heavy online traffic and had yet to be repaired late yesterday afternoon. The YouBike systems in Taipei, New Taipei City, Taichung and Changhua were still down as of 3:30pm, and the company said its engineers were working with telecoms to fix the problem. Users were able to return their rented bikes, but could not check out bikes. YouBike spokesperson Liu Li-chu (劉麗珠) attributed the problem to a huge volume of Internet traffic which began overwhelming the YouBike system at about 10am. Soon after the system went down, the company urged users to use other forms of transport to get to their destination. The outage was unprecedented in the history of the bike rental system launched in November 2012.
TRANSPORT
Toll changes proposed
The National Freeway Bureau said that it is proposing to increase freeway tolls on long weekends during peak hours and charge less at off-peak times, as part of efforts to prevent traffic congestion. The plan for the adjusted toll rates is to be forwarded to Minister of Transportation and Communications Chen Jian-yu (陳建宇) next week and trial runs will be implemented later this year, the bureau said. The idea is to charge a higher toll rate during peak hours and a lower rate in off-peak hours, the bureau said. The specific fees and the definition of peak and off-peak hours vary depending on the type of holiday, it added. The upcoming long weekends this year are Tomb Sweeping Day in April, the Dragon Boat Festival in June, Mid-Autumn Festival in September and National Day in October.
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