ENVIRONMENT
Riding bicycles encouraged
Visitors are encouraged to ride bicycles around Green Island (綠島) instead of driving to keep land crabs from being crushed as they cross roads to reproduce in shallow coastal waters, the East Coast National Scenic Area Administration said yesterday. The appeal was part of the agency’s campaign aimed at protecting the land crabs during their mating season and to promote ecotourism on Green Island. Visitors are also encouraged to escort the crabs across roads in sections where there is heavy traffic, the agency said. Ecotourism last year became a major priority for the agency after the introduction of eco-friendly hotels and a restaurant, it said, adding that there is also a campaign to replace cars and motorcycles with bicycles and electric scooters.
EDUCATION
MOE, France reach accord
Minister of Education Wu Se-hua (吳思華) yesterday returned from a six-day visit to France where he and his French counterpart agreed that the two nations would cooperate extensively in the areas of teaching Chinese as a second language and sinology, according to the Ministry of Education (MOE). Wu met French Secretary of State for Higher Education and Research Thierry Mandon for a breakfast meeting on the second day of his visit and reached a consensus on academic exchanges, the MOE said in a statement. In recent years, about 10,000 French people have studied Chinese thanks to promotional efforts by the French government, the ministry said. In the future, the MOE is to put a heavy emphasis on teacher training as a result of the agreement. It is also to encourage young French students and academics to come to Taiwan and exchange ideas.
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