■ Protests
Sex workers march on TSU
Activist group the Collective of Sex Workers and Supporters yesterday morning stormed the Taiwan Solidarity Union (TSU) national congress with chants of "Don't fine Taiwanese prostitutes" and burlesque dancing. At the demonstration, collective workers asked the TSU to ensure that its candidates in the year-end legislative elections are supportive of an amendment to Article 80 of the Social Order Law (社會秩序法). The collective said that it is unfair that only sex workers and not patrons are punished for having sexual activities. The collective's secretary-general Wang Fang-ping (王芳萍) urged voters to ask their candidates to remedy the problem with promises to revise the article so that neither party in a sexual exchange is punished.
■ Politics
Anti-nuke group travels
A nationwide walk to solicit support for lowering the threshold for holding a referendum on the fate of the Fourth Nuclear Power Plant came to Kaohsiung yesterday. More than 30 participants wearing bamboo hats took part in the Kaohsiung leg of the walk sponsored by the Nuke-4 Referendum Initiative Association. Wu Chien-kuo (吳建國), director of the association, said the Referendum Law passed by the Legislative Yuan last November was flawed, which he said has hindered the people in exercising their democratic rights. That law has set an "unreasonably high threshold" for the public, Wu said. People must collect 800,000 signatures from eligible voters to propose a referendum. Moreover, under the law a high number of "yes" votes will decide if the referendum is effective, which he said runs counter to democratic norms. The group has staged several nationwide walks to oppose the nuclear plant in Kungliao.
■ Education
Chen visits young scholars
President Chen Shui-bian (陳水扁) yesterday visited two Aboriginal students in Hsinchu who have won presidential education prizes. Chen first visited Yu Han (余涵), a junior high graduate who lives in the remote mountainous area of Chienshih village. Chen said Yu, living in an area lacking educational resources, still managed to pass the entrance examination to be a student at National Hsinchu Girls' Senior High School. "She is the pride of all her tribal neighbors," Chen said, encouraging her to study hard. Later Chen visited a tribe in the mountains where Chen Shih-wei (陳世偉) lives. Chen Shih-wei is an elementary school graduate. In addition to obtaining good marks in school, Chen Shih-wei also has to take care of his younger brothers and sisters.
■ Singapore
Drug suspects charged
Three men were charged yesterday with importing controlled drugs after they were allegedly caught with 20,000 tranquilizer tablets in Singapore, authorities said. The men -- two Taiwanese and one Singaporean -- face a maximum penalty of 20 years in prison and 15 strokes of the cane if convicted on the charge. The bureau declined to release their names. Officers detained the trio at a hotel on Thursday night after finding Erimin 5 tablets in the possession of one of the Taiwanese men, the bureau said in a statement. The tablets were worth about S$200,000 (US$116,500), it said. Police also confiscated more than S$1,500 (US$875) of suspected drug proceeds from the Singaporean man, the bureau 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