AGRICULTURE
OIE listing expected
The nation in May is expected to be listed as free from foot-and-mouth disease by the World Organization for Animal Health (OIE), the Council of Agriculture said on Tuesday. The Bureau of Animal and Plant Health Inspection and Quarantine said it was notified by the OIE that Taiwan has passed screening by its commission and application to be listed as foot-and-mouth disease free is to be reviewed by member nations. According to regulations, a member applying for such recognition should show evidence of an effective surveillance program and the absence of the disease for the two previous years. After a foot-and-mouth case in Taiwan in May 2013, there were no cases reported in Taipei, Penghu and Matsu through 2015, so Taiwan applied for recognition that year. However, Kinmen County reported A-type cases in May and June of that year, prompting the OIE to reject the application over misgivings that meat from even-toed hoofed animals might be transported from Kinmen to Taiwan proper. The bureau has kept the OEI informed about developments, while the Kinmen County Government has boosted controls on exports to Taiwan proper, it said.
ENVIRONMENT
Oil clean-up updated
Work to clean up an oil spill near Green Island (綠島) is expected to be completed by Saturday, the Environmental Protection Administration (EPA) said on Tuesday. As of 5pm that day, 2,007kg of oil and garbage had been removed and no oil was visible in areas within 8 nautical miles (14.8km) of the island’s shoreline, the EPA said. The spill is believed to have been caused by a cruise ship, cargo ship or other large vessel dumping heavy oil on the high seas that was carried to Green Island.
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