■ Crime
German caught with heroin
A German national was arrested at CKS International Airport on Sunday night and detained on suspicion of attempting to smuggle 3.1kg of heroin into Taiwan, the Central News Agency reported. Airport police said they arrested Andreas Linek, 27, when they found the heroin in his suitcase after he flew in from Bangkok on a China Airlines flight. Linek told officers that he was approached in Thailand by a British citizen named Terry Sullivan and a Chinese man named "Dezzy" who paid him US$6,000 to deliver the heroin to a person in Taiwan. Andreas was remanded in custody and faces a maximum sentence of death for drug trafficking.
■ Seismic activity
Temblor shakes Suao
A strong earthquake measuring 5.7 on the Richter scale rocked Taiwan yesterday morning, but there were no immediate reports of damage or casualties, the Seismology Center said. The tremor struck at 4:06am, with an epicenter 10km west of Suao township of the northeastern Ilan County and 67.1km underground, the center said. The latest quake was the fifth following four tremors which hit Taiwan over the weekend, measuring from 4.2 to 5.7 on the Richter scale. Taiwan, lying near the junction of two tectonic plates, is prone to earthquakes. A quake with a magnitude of 5.8 shook Taiwan Saturday last week, killing two Taiwanese and injuring a Canadian tourist.
■ Crime
Man jailed for poaching
A Nantou County man was yesterday found guilty of poaching a Formosan macaque and a Formosan Reeve's muntjac. He was sentenced to eight months in jail and fined NT$300,000, legal sources said. According to county prosecutors, the man, surnamed Yuan, was charged by police last September with capturing a Formosan macaque and a Formosan Reeve's muntjac with traps in the woods behind his residence in mountainous Hsinyi township. Although Formosan macaques and Formosan Reeve's muntjacs are not endangered species, the animals are entitled to special protection in accordance with the Wildlife Protection Law (野生動物保護法), police said. Nantou prosecutors said Yuan had kept the Formosan macaque, a rock monkey species endemic to Taiwan, as a pet but had killed the small deer for its meat.
■ Health
China-travel alert lifted
The Center for Disease Control yesterday said it would lift the travel warning for Beijing and Anhui Province from midnight today. Those who have entered the country from Beijing or Anhui Province or via "small three links" will not longer have to fill in the red epidemic-prevention form anymore. However, Center Deputy Director Shih Wen-yi (施文儀) said that the government's A-Level epidemic alert would remain in force at least until June 10. Shih said there would be no restrictions on public gatherings, such as the presidential inauguration ceremony on May 20, although those invited to attend the ceremony from the center and south of the country would have their temperatures checked before they board buses to Taipei. Anyone who has a fever would be asked to stay at home, Shih 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