HEALTH
Boosters available for kids
From Tuesday, children aged six months to five years who have already received two doses of the Moderna COVID-19 vaccine would be eligible for a second-generation Moderna jab as a booster, the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) said on Friday. However, the updated Moderna bivalent COVID-19 vaccine targeting the Omicron BA.4 and BA.5 subvariants of SARS-CoV-2 cannot be administered as a third shot for children aged six months to four years if their previous two doses were Pfizer-BioNTech jabs, it said. The standard Pfizer-BioNTech vaccination regime for children comprises three shots, while Moderna’s is two, so children must receive Pfizer-BioNTech as their third shot, the CDC said. However, five-year-olds can receive either as their booster, it said. The updated Moderna dose should be administered at least three months after the previous shot, it said, adding that about 134,000 children are eligible for shots.
POLITICS
Cabinet spokesman named
Alan Lin (林子倫), deputy executive director of the Executive Yuan’s Office of Energy and Carbon Reduction, was named Cabinet spokesman on Friday. The Cabinet in a statement described Lin, who teaches political science at National Taiwan University, as a public policy expert, saying that he has been assisting the government in planning its energy and environmental policies. He also led a delegation last year that participated in discussions at the COP27 summit in Egypt, it said. Lin’s predecessor, Chen Tsung-yen (陳宗彥), tendered his resignation in February following allegations that he offered favors for sex during his time as a civil servant in Tainan more than a decade ago. Minister Without Portfolio Lo Ping-cheng (羅秉成) has been acting Cabinet spokesman since then.
DIPLOMACY
Envoy shares vision
Representative to Singapore Tung Chen-yuan (童振源) said his main objective would be to continue to advance the ties that were cemented by his predecessor, Francis Liang (梁國新). Tung, who arrived in the Southeast Asian city-state on Monday, said that Taiwan and Singapore have a longstanding friendship built on extensive collaboration and exchanges, including several memorandums of understanding and trade agreements. He said he is especially hoping to improve ties in the tourism and the high-tech sectors. Tung previously served as Overseas Community Affairs Council minister.
CULTURE
Exhibition opens in Taipei
French conceptual artist Laurent Grasso’s first solo exhibition in Taiwan opened in Taipei on Wednesday, showcasing several of his pieces in a variety of media. The Paris-based artist said the exhibition, titled “Time Leaves,” reflects his constant exploration of the idea of “time” and “traveling through times.” The exhibition, which runs until July 15 at Tao Art in Neihu District (內湖), brings together several works created by the Marcel Duchamp Prize winner, including the film OttO made for the 2018 Biennale of Sydney. The 21-minute film explores the “sacred sites” of indigenous people in Australia’s Northern Territory, showing Grasso’s interest in traditional beliefs and myths, and his embrace of technology. Also on display is another series of paintings of “strangely shaped” flowers, the gallery said. Titled “Future Herbarium,” the paintings were inspired by flowers that mutated after the Fukushima Dai-ichi nuclear power plant disaster in Japan in 2011, the gallery 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