FOOD SECURITY
Food sites see traffic soar
The Council of Agriculture yesterday said online sellers of agricultural products have reported a 50 percent surge in sales from Tuesday last week, when the nation began to see an escalation of locally transmitted cases of COVID-19. Products flying off the shelves include frozen dumplings, pizza, rice, noodles and canned food, it said. The agency said that to boost supplies, it has stepped up efforts to connect more farmers with online operators. The agency assured the public, saying that there are ample supplies of aquatic and agricultural products online. The agency said there are 223,300 tonnes of fishery stocks — products ranging from tuna, salmon, shark and Pacific saury to squid — from fish farmers and frozen food providers. The inventory can support Taiwan for at least six months, it added.
REGISTRATION
TaipeiPASS downloads spike
Downloads of the Taipei City Government’s TaipeiPASS (台北通) application have skyrocketed since Saturday, when the city began requiring real-name registration at public spaces. Available for iOS and Android, users can connect their national identification card to the app by photographing both sides and then entering their telephone number. It then provides a QR code that users can present when entering an establishment, cutting down the time needed to register and allowing businesses to know whether a customer has been listed as a contact of a COVID-19 case. Users do not need to be Taipei residents to use the app.
EDUCATION
Third-years study from home
Students in Taipei, New Taipei City and Yilan who are in their third year of middle school or high school are to attend classes from home from today, the cities announced yesterday. As the grades have a relatively light workload at the moment, the effects would be relatively limited, New Taipei City Mayor Hou You-yi (侯友宜) said. Those in their third year of middle school finished their high-school entrance exams yesterday, while most of those in their third year of high school have been accepted to university or are preparing to sit for subject exams in July. Taipei also announced the closure of the Lao Song, Long Shan, Shuang Yuan and Ying Qiao elementary schools in Wanhua District (萬華) for one week from today. Meanwhile, to avoid overcrowding on public transportation at peak hours, the Directorate-General of Personnel Administration yesterday announced that public employees would have flexible work hours until Friday next week. Employees who live or work in Taipei or New Taipei City can start any time from 7:30am to 10am and leave between 4:30pm and 7pm.
TAOYUAN
Claw machine shops shut
The Department of Economic Development yesterday announced that all claw machine stores in the city are to be shut until June 8 as part of disease prevention measures. The city said that the decision was made in consultation with the Police Department due to the stores being unsupervised, making it impossible to enforce real-name registration — a requirement of the level 3 COVID-19 alert. The city said that the police would patrol the city’s 1,068 claw machine stores, and would report any stores found operating illegally to the Department of Public Health, which could then issue fines. The policy would be amended as the outbreak situation changes, Department of Economic Development official Liao Chen-hung (廖振宏) said yesterday.
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