TOURISM
Falling rocks kill tourist
A tourist died after being hit by falling rocks while traveling on the Central Cross-Island Highway, the Tourism Bureau said yesterday. The bureau said the accident occurred at 1:40pm, when the rocks fell from a slope along the highway and hit a tour bus carrying 35 people. A 47-year-old woman surnamed Wang (王) died on the spot, the bureau said, adding that two men and one woman were also injured. All the passengers on board were Taiwanese, it said. The bureau said the one-day tour between Taipei and Hualien was arranged by Taipei-based Iris Travel Service Co (蝶戀花旅行社) and included 34 tourists and one tour guide. The travel agency informed the bureau that each tourist in the group was insured — NT$2 million (US$63,211) in the case of a death and NT$200,000 for injuries. The driver was not under the influence of alcohol, police said.
HEALTH
Forest pet ban extended
A ban against pets in forest recreation areas is to be extended for another year until July 31 next year, due to continued detections of the rabies virus in wild ferret-badgers, the Council of Agriculture said. The ban applies to all forest recreation areas, forest parks and nature reserves managed by the Forestry Bureau. It was first imposed in August 2013 to prevent the spread of rabies, after rabies infections among ferret-badgers were reported. The bureau said there have been seven cases in which people have been bitten by rabid ferret-badgers this year, compared with four last year. The Transmissible Animal Disease Prevention and Control Act (動物傳染病防治條例) states that people who take their pets to the forbidden areas can be fined between NT$50,000 and NT$1 million, it said.
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