WEATHER
Koppu to bring rain today
Typhoon Koppu is moving at a slow pace, but its peripheral cloud system is expected to bring rain to the nation’s northern and eastern regions starting from today, the Central Weather Bureau said yesterday. As of yesterday morning, Koppu was about 810km from Taiwan, moving west at a speed of 10kph toward Luzon Island in the Philippines, the bureau said. The storm was previously expected to move closer to Taiwan on Tuesday, but the bureau said that it would take longer for Koppu to bring heavy rain to the nation, given that it is now moving at a slower pace. Starting from Tuesday, Taiwan is expected to feel a stronger impact from the typhoon and see heavy rain due to its peripheral current, the bureau said.
HEALTH
Chickens to be culled
About 20,000 free-range chickens at a farm in Changhua County’s Dacheng Township (大城) are to be culled today after they tested positive for influenza A virus subtype H5N2, a highly pathogenic variant of avian influenza. It is the second confirmed case of bird flu at the farm this year, which resumed poultry farming in July after a mass culling and disinfection, Bureau of Animal and Plant Health Inspection and Quarantine Director-General Chang Su-san (張淑賢) said, adding that sentinel chickens were raised during the preoperative period to ensure that the virus was not active in the environment. Migrant birds might be a possible source of contagion, as the affected farm is located along the shore and it is migration season, Chang said.
PUBLIC HEALTH
Dengue cases reach 24,874
Another 367 cases of dengue fever have been reported in Taiwan, bringing the total number of infections since the start of May to 24,874, the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) said yesterday. In Tainan, 183 new cases were reported on Friday, which was 16 fewer than on the same day last week, the CDC said. Kaohsiung reported 173 new cases, 39 more than a week earlier. From the start of the outbreak up until Friday, the three worst-affected areas are Tainan, with 20,172 reported cases, Kaohsiung (4,274) and Pingtung County (100), CDC figures showed. Since May 1, there have been 106 confirmed fatalities in the nation from the disease, the CDC said. While 22,500 dengue patients have recovered, 44 are still being treated in intensive care units, CDC statistics showed. CDC Deputy Director-General Chuang Jen-hsiang (莊人祥) predicted that numbers of reported cases of dengue fever in Kaohsiung would start to slow by the end of this month as the weather cools.
ELECTIONS
FTP calls for candidates
The newly formed Free Taiwan Party (FTP), which advocates Taiwan independence, is inviting people who share its political ideals to join it and run for seats in next year’s legislative elections. A new political party needs to nominate candidates in at least 10 of the 73 electoral districts in order to qualify to run for seats in the Legislative Yuan. The FTP is hoping that if it can qualify to run, it could win 5 percent of the votes and win one of 34 party-list seats, FTP Chairman Tsay Ting-kuei (蔡丁貴) said. Tsay said that by representing the FTP in the Jan. 16 elections, politicians interested in public office could build their reputation through increased public exposure. However, the FTP, as a new party, is concentrating more on the 2018 city and county council elections, he added.
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
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
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