ZOOS
Patrick the koala, 19, dies
Patrick, one of the oldest koalas at Taipei Zoo, has died of age-related multiple organ failure, the zoo said yesterday. He was 19. Patrick was born in Australia’s Currumbin Wildlife Sanctuary and was sent to Taipei Zoo in July 1999 when he was two years old. He began to show a loss of appetite and a lack of energy, and died two days later on Monday, the zoo said. The average life span of a koala is between 10 and 15 years, so Patrick could consider a centenarian in the koala world, the zoo said.
SOCIETY
Man lost at sea rescued
A Yunlin County man was rescued on Monday after being stuck out at sea for more than 24 hours with only a used tire to keep him afloat. The Coast Guard Administration said it was informed on Monday evening that a fishing vessel had picked up a man who was drifting in waters off the coast of Beimen District (北門) in Tainan. He was conscious when coast guard personnel picked him up and took him to Tainan harbor. Medical workers who had been waiting for him on shore decided he did not need to be taken to hospital. The man, surnamed Lin (林), told coast guard officials he was fishing from a used tire in waters not far from the sixth naphtha cracker complex in Yunlin County’s Mailiao Township (麥寮) on Sunday afternoon when he was pulled away by a strong current and could not row back to shore. Wu Shih-hsiung (吳世雄), captain of the fishing vessel that rescued Lin, said Lin waved to get the fishing boat’s attention when Wu and his crew were working on the deck. Although Lin was conscious, he was dehydrated and showed signs of hyperthermia, Wu 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