■ Education
Role models sought
Minister of Education Huang Jong-tsun (黃榮村) yesterday announced a campaign to find 100 outstanding public figures or successful businesspeople from various walks of life whose life stories could inspire students in their studies. Huang said students need more a diverse paradigm to emulate for their school careers in the light of the utilitarianism that has over-whelmed campuses. The 100 role models will travel nationwide to promote the idea of diligence. Wu Jing-jyi (吳靜吉), head of the Foundation for Scholarly Exchange presided over yesterday's news conference and announced that the Ministry of Interior, the National Youth Commission and the Council for Cultural Affairs will participate in the campaign.
■ Education
Dropouts face rejection
A survey released yesterday by the Humanistic Education Foundation (人本教育基金會) showed that the number of dropouts had reached 2,536 by the end of last month, while only 1,063 students returned to school during the past year. The rate of resumption of studies is only about 40 percent. The foundation said that about 70 percent of the drop-outs that social workers had helped return to school were then rejected by school authorities. Most schools do not welcome dropouts because they fear they will cause trouble to the other students. The foundation criticized this attitude and urged the Ministry of Education to enhance its supervision over the local schools to assure that dropouts have a right to resume their education.
■ Diplomacy
Tung pledges cooperation
Hong Kong Chief Executive Tung Chee-hwa (董建華) said Thursday that the territory will try to improve its economic and cultural relations with Taiwan. When asked in a press conference to comment on a proposal to establish a free trade area between Hong Kong and Taiwan, Tung said he was pleased to see that Taiwan and Hong Kong have improved their relations in trade, investment, and tourism in the past six years. He said his government will be pleased to do anything that will improve these relations.
■ Crime
Police nab forgers
The Taipei Police yesterday arrested a fraud suspect and seized more than 300 semi-finished counterfeit credit cards. The suspect, Chiu Hung-ming (丘宏銘), was arrested when he picked up an express air parcel containing the cards. A spokesman for the Taipei Police Criminal Investigation Bureau said that, according to a preliminary investigation, the semi-finished counterfeit cards and related data of the original card owners were sent from Hong Kong, but the original card owners are people of the US, the UK and Australia. The faked cards will be sent to foreign countries after being finished in Taiwan. The police are trying to track down other members of the counterfeiting gang, he added.
■ Crime
Taiwanese student killed
A Taiwanese student who was studying music in Russia was killed in Tanbvy, the representative office of Taiwan in Moscow confirmed yesterday, CNA reported. The news agency did not provide any personal details about the victim, such as name, age, sex, or whether the student was the victim of foul play or an accident. However, the office also confirmed that a suspect was arrested, CNA 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
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