SOCIETY
Pangolins debut in Prague
Two Formosan pangolins on loan from Taipei Zoo on Sunday debuted at Prague Zoo, with Prague Mayor Zdenek Hrib praising the cities’ ties. Prague Zoo named the male and female pangolins Hugo and Fazolka respectively, following the results of an online poll, Hrib said at a welcoming party. Representative to the Czech Republic Ke Liang-ruey (柯良叡) joined Hrib and zoo director Miroslav Bobek at a ribbon-cutting ceremony marking the opening of the pangolins’ enclosure. Prague Zoo is the second zoo in Europe to host pangolins from Taiwan, after Germany’s Zoo Leipzig. Taipei Zoo spokesman Eric Tsao (曹先紹) said the loan of the pangolins to Prague was aimed at creating a breeding network in Europe. The pair arrived in the Czech Republic last month.
WEATHER
Rain lowers temperatures
A stationary front in the Bashi Channel, coupled with increased moisture arriving from southern China, yesterday brought downpours across the nation, particularly in western and northeastern areas, the Central Weather Bureau (CWB) said. As of 3pm, Nantou County’s Hehuanshan (合歡山) accumulated the most rainfall at 134.5mm, the bureau said. Temperatures yesterday fell slightly nationwide due to a persistent northeasterly wind, with highs of 18°C to 20°C and lows of about 16°C to 18°C forecast for northern and northeastern Taiwan. At 8am, Miaoli County’s Sihu Township (西湖) and New Taipei City’s Shimen District (石門) had recorded nationwide lows of 14.7°C, followed by Taoyuan’s Jhongli District (中壢) with 15°C.
SOCIETY
Event highlights photography
An exhibition of Pulitzer Prize-winning photographs is to open next month at Huashan 1914 Creative Park in Taipei’s Zhongzheng (中正), event organizer Media Sphere Communications said. The event, titled “Shooting — The Pulitzer Prize for Photojournalism’s 80th Anniversary,” is to showcase 13 images that won the prize in photojournalism to mark the anniversary, it said. The display would include photos of scenes of daily life in India amid the COVID-19 pandemic and chaos during the US’ departure from Afghanistan, which won the prize in the feature and breaking news categories respectively, it said. Scenes of the pandemic from around the world are to be featured in a special collection at the exhibition, it added. The event is to run from June 3 to Sept. 25.
HEALTH
No radiation in imports
Japanese food shipments from areas recently removed from an import ban, which was implemented following the 2011 Fukushima Dai-ichi nuclear power plant disaster, have all passed radiation inspections since February, Deputy Minister of Health and Welfare Hsueh Jui-yuan (薛瑞元) said yesterday. The imports from Fukushima and four nearby prefectures have been inspected batch-by-batch at the border for radioactive residue since Feb. 21, when the ban was lifted after 11 years, he said. As of Friday, about 180 shipments of food products have arrived from the prefectures, and none of them have been found to contain excessive levels of radioactivity, he said. Twenty-two batches of food imports from the areas failed inspections, but not because of radioactive contamination, he added. One shipment of strawberries was found to contain high levels of pesticide, while the others were rejected because they failed to meet standards for Chinese-language labeling, he 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:
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