■ Crime
Police cameras stolen
The National Police Admin-istration's Highway Police Bureau yesterday said that unidentified thieves stole two of its newly-installed highway cameras. Bureau officials said that on Nov. 26 they installed 15 cameras
on north and southbound lanes between the 110km mark and 150km mark to monitor traffic conditions and spot traffic violations. Two of the cameras are now missing. The cameras are worth NT$200,000 each. Second Division Deputy Chief Chen Ying-chieh (陳英傑) said the bureau could not understand how these thieves stole these cameras since both were mounted on 10m-high poles. The police, however, believed that there must have been witnesses to the theft because of the heavy traffic on the highways and they said they are confident of capturing the thieves.
■ Crime
Thai police nab Taiwanese
Thai police at Chiang Mai International Airport in northern Thailand arrested
a Taiwanese man yesterday on charges of drug traf-ficking after finding more than 4,000 methampheta-mine tablets in his luggage, an officer said. Wan Hsing-Jen, 52, of Taipei, was nabbed at the airport after an X-ray machine detected a suspicious object in his bag as he prepared to board a Mandarin Airline flight to Taipei, police Major Archayon Kraithong said. The pills were found in a
can of face powder, he said. Wan, who traveled regularly to northern Thailand, has confessed to the charges and is being held by police pending a trial, Archayon said. Wan could face the death penalty if convicted.
■ Culture
Museum hosts fashion show
A fashion show featuring 26 local designers will be held on Friday evening at the National Taiwan Museum, the Taipei Fashion Designer Association announced yesterday. The show, supported by the Council for Cultural Affairs, will present nearly 200 ready-to-wear clothing items made of the fabrics manufactured by Taiwanese factories and based on the elements of Taiwan's culture, council Chairwoman Tchen Yu-chiou (陳郁秀) said yesterday. Tchen said the show will highlight the council's plan to develop the fashion industry, which is a major part of its Creativity and Culture Industry Develop-ment Project. Tchen said it was significant that the clothes created by Taiwan-ese designers were being shown at the 90-year-old museum. First lady Wu Shu-chen (吳淑珍) and Vice President Annette Lu (呂秀蓮) will attend the show.
■ Technology
Hsinchu ranks high
Hsinchu's digitalization level is among the top five in the country, according to figures released by the Directorate General of Budget, Account-ing and Statistics (DGBAS) yesterday. The agency used computers, the Intranet and cellphones to assess the digitalization level last year. Out of 100 households, 66 percent of Hsinchu City had computers, next only to Taipei City and Taipei County. Hsinchu County was in fifth place. Of every 100 households in the country,
45 percent have the facilities to go to the Internet. The ratio in Taipei is 64 percent, 58 percent in Taipei County, 56 percent in Hsinchu County and 52 percent in Hsinchu City. As for cell-phone ownership, Taipei County and Taoyuan County surpassed 90 percent, while Taipei City ranked third
with nearly 90 percent, Hsinchu City was fourth
with 88 percent and Hsinchu County was fifth with 86 percent.
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