HEALTH
Chickens culled in Tainan
A total of 10,820 chickens were on Monday culled at a farm in Tainan after it was confirmed to be infected with the highly pathogenic influenza A virus subtype H5N2, the Tainan Animal Health Inspection and Protection Office said. The culling was the third time the disease has hit Tainan this year, office Deputy Director Chuang Wei-chao (莊惟超) said. Disinfection work and bird flu surveillance and monitoring procedures were intensified at poultry farms near the infected chicken farm, he said.
CULTURE
Contest calls for entries
An annual literary contest aimed at giving a voice to immigrants and migrant workers is now calling for submissions from expatriates in Taiwan, Hong Kong, Macau, Singapore and Malaysia. The Taiwan Literature Award for Migrants was initiated in 2014 by Chang Cheng (張正), who runs Southeast Asian bookstore Brilliant Time in New Taipei City’s Jhonghe District (中和). Organizers are accepting entries in languages such as Vietnamese, Indonesian, Thai or Filipino, with a limit of 3,000 words. The deadline is May 31. Contest details can be found at tlam.sea.taipei.
CHARITY
TAS to host flea market
The Taipei American School (TAS) Orphanage Club is to host its semi-annual flea market on Saturday from 10am to 3pm, come rain or shine. Scores of tables are to feature a variety of clothing, toys, household items, antiques, books and electronics. There are also to be food vendors. There is no admission fee and all proceeds are to benefit needy children and orphans in Taiwan and overseas. The school is at 800 Zhongshan N Rd Sec 6 in Taipei’s Tianmu (天母).
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