ENVIRONMENT
Bureau targets mosquitoes
Preventing the spread of dengue fever is likely to become a priority for environmental authorities in Kaohsiung as summer approaches, officials said yesterday. The Kaohsiung Environmental Protection Bureau said it would step up prevention measures beginning in June by sending a 120-person team every Wednesday to clean up possible mosquito breeding grounds, including 40 manholes and box culverts across the city, rather than collect garbage. Last year, Kaohsiung was hit by the nation’s severest dengue fever outbreak since 2012, with more than 2,000 cases reported. The bureau assured residents that it could handle its sanitation responsibilities despite reducing the frequency of garbage collections. It said the city collects garbage every day apart from Sunday, while other metropolitan areas, such as Taipei, New Taipei City, Taichung and Tainan, collect garbage five days per week. Dengue fever is an infectious tropical disease spread by mosquitoes. The symptoms include fever, headache, muscle and joint pain, and skin rash.
ENTERTAINMENT
Shinhwa announce Taipei gig
Shinhwa, one of the most renowned boy bands in South Korea, are scheduled to hold a concert in Taipei on May 16 as part of a tour to celebrate their 17th anniversary this year. The concert is scheduled to take place at the Taipei World Trade Center Nangang Exhibition Hall. It is part of the band’s Asia tour that is due to begin in Shanghai on May 9. Since their debut in 1998, Shinhwa have released 12 studio albums, the most recent being We. The band members are known for their upbeat music and energetic dance routines. Their hit songs include Perfect Man, Only One and Once in a Lifetime.
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