A group of animal rights advocates has created an online platform for tracking the health and whereabouts of stray animals.
The platform — called “Lang Lang” (浪浪甘巴爹), a reference to strays — was developed by three campaigners whose online handles are Derek, James and Yuna.
The trio — who have all adopted stray dogs and cats that they care for at home — said they founded the site to help people who hope to adopt pets, or have lost their pets and are hoping to find them.
As all three are computer engineers, they hope to capitalize on their skills to help the animals in the best way they can, they said, adding that the portal is a project they engage in during their free time.
“If you are looking for your pet, you can register and enter your pet’s information on the platform, and you will be able to download any information about your pet that is uploaded by other users,” the group said.
The platform’s servers also check information uploaded by animal shelters nationwide, with the information updated every few hours, they said.
This is all done automatically, and saves pet owners the trouble of having to constantly search various Web sites on their own, they added.
Another feature of the platform is that it matches potential pet owners with animals waiting for adoption by allowing them to enter details about their ideal pet, they said.
For example, potential owners can narrow their search by keying in information such as type of pet, color, breed and gender, they said.
Potential owners can choose to be notified when a match appears, or they can be contacted directly by owners who are hoping to give up their pets for adoption, they said.
The platform also allows users to submit reports on people suspected of abusing animals, to prevent these people from adopting animals through the system, they said, adding that such reports would have to be accompanied by proof.
The system also collects information on animal abuse reports made available online by authorities, including nationwide animal protection offices, they said.
Malicious animal-abuse reports submitted to harm or defame others would be deleted, and the poster would be blocked from the Web site, they said.
“We have accumulated files on about 12,000 animals in the system, as well as an additional 500 files on people looking to adopt pets or find lost pets,” they said, adding that they hoped those numbers would grow.
“The platform is free to use, and we will never take payment from users. We are doing this because we want to see these animals go to warm, loving homes,” they 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:
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