■ AID
Rice donated to Mongolia
Taiwan will donate 120 tonnes of rice to help feed poor families in Mongolia, a foreign ministry official said yesterday. The rice will be shipped on Sept. 10 and is expected to arrive in Mongolia in early October, the official said. The Rotary Club and World Vision would take charge of the distribution, he added. Taiwan has offered humanitarian assistance to Mongolia despite the lack of diplomatic relations. Last December it donated 7,000 tonnes of rice to help relieve food shortages in northern Mongolia. It also began labor imports in May from Mongolia, which recognizes Beijing rather than Taipei.
■ Crime
Two arrested in drug bust
Thai police have arrested two Taiwanese brothers on drug trafficking charges after allegedly finding 14kg of heroin in their Bangkok apartment, media reports said yesterday. Huang Chien-hua (黃健樺), 28, and Huang Chien-yu (黃健育), 23, were charged with drug possession and trafficking yesterday after police discovered the heroin haul, worth 6 million baht (US$150,000), in the brothers' rented flat, The Nation newspaper reported. "The heroin was packed with dried fruit, nuts and fried durian in small packages destined for Taiwan," Narcotics Suppression Bureau deputy commissioner Major General Suwat Itthikul said. Police suspect the brothers were using Taiwan as a transit point for exports to the US and Europe. Drug trafficking is a capital offence in Thailand.
■ Shooting
Man killed in Bangkok
Unidentified attackers fatally shot the Taiwanese owner of a Bangkok fitness center and his Thai employee, and beat to death a security guard, police said yesterday. The body of Liu Isang, 44, was found in the bedroom of his second-floor apartment above his business, which included a sports equipment shop and a fitness center, said police Lieutenant Namchoke Khunavichai. Police are working on the theory that the killings were motivated by personal conflict because there was no sign of robbery in the house or the shop, Namchoke said. He said a Thai man who worked for Liu was found dead in the bathroom, also with gunshot wounds. The third victim, a security guard, was beaten to death on the ground floor of the building, he said. The attackers are believe to have killed the victims during the night and the bodies were discovered yesterday by other employees, he said. No other details were available.
■ Crime
Yen's sentence reduced
Taiwan High Court judges yesterday ruled that Independent Lawmaker Yen Ching-piao's (顏清標) sentence should be reduced 13 years in jail and shall pay back NT$35 million, the public fund he used for covering his expenditures at hostess bars and KTV lounges. Yen was charged for corruption, attempted murder, possession of illegal firearms and attempting to pervert the course of justice. He was initially sentenced to 20 years by the Taichung District Court in 2001. In 2002, the high court sentenced him to 11 years and six months in prison. The Supreme Court upheld Yen's appeal and asked the high court to rehear the case. Yesterday's verdict was the result of that appeal, but Yen is allowed to appeal again. In a government crackdown on organized crime in 1986, Yen spent three-and-a-half years in Green Island's maximum-security prison. His participation in local politics began soon after he was released.
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