ENVIRONMENT
Strays fixed in ‘cat Mecca’
Close to 50 stray cats in the Houtong area (猴硐) of New Taipei City’s Ruifang District (瑞芳) were neutered yesterday amid efforts to control the population of strays. Veterinarians neutered 49 of about 200 stray cats in Houtong, known by some as Taiwan’s “cat Mecca” and was selected by US cable network CNN as one of six places where cats outshone other tourist attractions in 2013. The remaining strays are to be neutered in different stages, the city’s Animal Protection and Health Inspection Office said. They also vaccinated the 49 cats as a way to protect visitors who might handle them. The personnel also took a census of the cats in the town to better keep track of them. The town’s popularity has attracted some unscrupulous cat owners, who dump their cats in the area, which sometimes leads to disease.
PUBLIC HEALTH
Shanghai travel alert raised
The nation has raised its travel advisory for Shanghai by one level after an additional H7N9 influenza case was reported there on Wednesday last week. The Mainland Affairs Council said that — in keeping with suggestions by the Centers for Disease Control — it upgraded the travel advisory for Shanghai to “alert.” There is also a level-2 alert for China’s Fujian, Jiangsu, and Zhejiang provinces. Travelers to those areas should take precautions and adopt strong protective measures. Other cities and provinces in China — not including Hong Kong and Macau — would remain at a level-1 “watch.”
PUBLIC HEALTH
Enterovirus kills infant boy
The Centers for Disease Control (CDC) yesterday said there was a growing enterovirus threat after the second death this year from severe enterovirus infection in a newborn. The boy, born in New Taipei City on May 27, died two hours after birth, infected with the Coxsackie A16 virus, the agency said. It urged precautions, especially for pregnant women or families with newborns, as infants and children under five are at increased risk of developing enterovirus infections with severe complications. The CDC said the number of people seeking emergency treatment for enterovirus symptoms had increased to 1,041 from May 31 to June 6, representing an emergency consultation rate of 7.73 per 1,000, higher than the epidemic threshold of 4.35 per 1,000.
SOCIETY
Police seize 28kg of heroin
Nine suspects have been detained on suspicion of involvement in drug trafficking, police said yesterday. Officers seized a total of 28kg of heroin, which they said has a market value of about NT$148 million (US$4.74 million). The Criminal Investigation Division of the Taipei City Police Department said it was tipped off in February that several people were planning to smuggle heroin from Thailand. Late on Saturday, eight of the suspects arrived from Thailand as part of a tour group; police found that they were all dressed in loose clothing. Police seized 14.097kg of heroin they said was hidden under the suspects’ clothes. Police said that one suspect was in charge of leading a group of drug mules, each of whom received NT$200,000 per trip. Police also found NT$782,000 in cash in a vehicle that was to pick up the suspects at Taiwan Taoyuan International Airport. Police then tracked down a suspected wholesale heroin dealer on Sunday, seizing 13.749kg of heroin and NT$132,000.
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