TRAVEL
Warning issued for NZ
The Centers for Disease Control on Friday issued a level 1 travel warning for New Zealand over a measles outbreak, urging those wishing to visit the nation to exercise caution, especially people with children who are not vaccinated or are younger than one. In the year to Thursday, 1,214 people have been infected, making it New Zealand’s worst measles epidemic since 1997, Deputy Director-General Philip Lo (羅一鈞) said. The outbreak is mainly concentrated in Auckland, with 1,007 of the confirmed cases reported there, Lo said. Anyone planning to visit should receive all vaccinations at least two weeks before departure, the centers said.
TOURISM
Brunei flights planned
Four charter flights are to fly from Brunei to Kinmen County in late November as part of efforts to promote tourism to the islands, the Kinmen County Tourism Department announced earlier this week. The local government has been working to attract visitors from nearby nations, the department said. In addition to Brunei, charter flights are also planned from Singapore, Hong Kong, Macau, Malaysia, Japan and South Korea, it added. Department director Ting Chien-kang (丁健剛) said that the charter flight plan was proposed earlier this year. With assistance from the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and the Ministry of Transportation and Communications, it was agreed that Royal Brunei Airlines would operate the Brunei-Kinmen charters, Ting said, adding that getting Brunei to agree to the flights has been a breakthrough. The national carrier restarted direct flight services to Taiwan in December last year after a 15-year hiatus.
FOREIGN AFFAIRS
Energy exchanges urged
A German climatologist said that his country is willing to share with Taiwan its experience transitioning to renewable energy and hopes that the two sides could foster exchanges on research into climate change and its effects. Hans Joachim Schellnhuber, director emeritus of the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research, made the comment on Tuesday at the Ministry of Science and Technology in Taipei, where he met with Minster of Science and Technology Chen Liang-gee (陳良基) to discuss exchanges on the issue of climate change. Taiwan’s location and vulnerability to natural disasters makes it an ideal spot for climate research, he said, adding that Germany is hoping to establish exchanges with Taiwan on renewable energy. Chen said that Taiwan could definitely learn from Germany to help advance the nation’s sustainable development.
SOCIETY
Life-saving Lab to compete
A five-year-old golden Labrador that helped save lives after a magnitude 6 earthquake in Hualien last year is heading to France to compete in the annual World Championship for Rescue Dogs, the Taichung Fire Bureau said on Friday. Tie-hsiung (鐵雄, “Iron Hero”) in November last year passed the qualifying round with 280 out of 300 points in a simulated search and rescue operation that required him to find people buried under rubble, bureau chief Tseng Chin-tsai (曾進財) said. Tie-hsiung and his trainer, Lee Chun-sheng (李俊昇), along with another dog named Wonder and four other trainers, are to represent Taiwan at the event in Paris from Tuesday to Sunday next week, Tseng said. While in Europe, the team is also to take part in a mantrailing training program at the German Search and Rescue Dog Association, Tseng 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
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