■ Crime
Cambodia jails Taiwanese
A Cambodian court has sentenced a sobbing Taiwanese man to 11 years in prison after he was nabbed at Phnom Penh International Airport on July 26 last year with 1.4kg of heroin strapped to his body. Pan Chin-hsiung, 45, had pleaded guilty to the charge, but denied knowing that the material he was carrying was heroin, saying a man known only as "Lim" had asked him to carry it to Taiwan when they met at a guesthouse in Phnom Penh last year. "I thought it was Chinese medicine," Pan told the court. "If I had known it was heroin I would not have done it, because if you are caught with heroin in Taiwan it is death by firing squad." The judge said Pan must serve time to set an example for others thinking of trafficking drugs through Cambodia.
■ Cross-strait ties
Ma pushes Sungshan as hub
Taipei Mayor Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九) was keenly touting Sungshan Airport as a hub for direct transport links with China, saying that the opening will reduce travel time for Taiwanese businesspeople traveling between the two sides by more than 25 percent. Ma made the remarks at a seminar yesterday with local business leaders and representatives. Claiming that direct air links between Taipei, Shanghai and Dongguan will save passengers a great deal of time, Ma contended that Sungshan should be made into an exclusive gateway for cross-strait travel, while CKS International Airport should continue to handle international passenger and cargo travel. Ma said that Taiwan should make the move to sharpen its competitive edge and create business opportunities in view of the grouping of economies in Southeast Asia and Northeast Asia by 2010.
■ Diplomacy
DOH head visits Austria
Department of Health Director-General Chen Chien-jen (陳建仁) headed for Vienna on Tuesday to attend the 2004 European Health Forum after ending a three-day visit in Rome. The three-day annual forum opened yesterday in Bad Hofgastein, Austria. Chen will preside over a session on issues related to health insurance. He said that in addition to giving the participants a better understanding of the National Health Insurance system, he will also lobby for the support of European countries for Taiwan's bid to join the World Health Organization (WHO). Chen visited Italy's Chamber of Deputies and Senate, accompanied by Repre-sentative to Italy Lin Ki-tseng (林基正), on Tuesday morning.
■ Medicine
First son-in-law sued
President Chen Shui-bian's (陳水扁) son-in-law Chao Chien-ming (趙建銘) was yesterday sued for negligence following the death of one of his patients. The patient, 84-year-old Ko Hsia (柯霞), passed away on Sept. 6. Ko's son, Chao Tieh-hsiung (趙鐵雄), called for Chao Chien-ming to take responsibility for his mother's death and filed the suit yesterday. Ko was admitted to hospital on July 2 after a fall that left her complaining of back and leg pain. The hospital diagnosed her with a lumbar fracture and lumbar spinal canal stenosis. Chao operated on her on July 7, and again on July 15, to clean up the wound. On Aug. 26, Ko felt unwell and was sent to the hospital again. After a detailed exam, her heart suddenly began to fail. Hospital superintendent Huang Kun-chang (黃焜璋) said the cause of death was ventricular fibrillation, which was unrelated to the surgery performed by Chao.
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