■ Crime
Pair sentenced for torture
A Taichung court yesterday sentenced Liu Cheng-chi (劉正祺) to four-and-a-half years in prison for enslaving and torturing his Vietnamese ex-wife for nearly seven months. Liu's first wife, Lin Li-ju (林麗如) was also sen-tenced to two-and-a-half years in prison for her part in the affair. "I am grateful that the judges have returned justice to me," said Liu's ex, Doan Nhut Linh. The then 20-year-old Doan was found battered and scarred near a Taichung power plant in February last year. She weighed just 29kg. Doan told police and social workers that she had suffered con-stant abuse and starvation before Liu and his former wife pushed her out of a vehicle near the plant.
■ Politics
Yu to cooperate with probe
Premier Yu Shyi-kun is happy to cooperate with the Control Yuan in its investigation into the March 19 assassination attempt on President Chen Shui-bian (陳水扁) and the launching of a "national security" mech-anism afterwards, the Cabi-net announced yesterday. "Our stance on the matter is clear and that is that the premier is more than willing to talk with Control Yuan members in their investi-gation," Cabinet Spokesman Chen Chi-mai (陳其邁) told a press conference. "As soon as the time and place are settled, the premier will be happy to pay them a visit." He made the remark in response to a media report which claimed Yu had rejected the watch-dog agency's request to interview him because Yu believed he played no part in the case.
■ Politics
NSB briefs committee
Members of the March 19 Shooting Truth Investigation Special Committee visited the National Security Bureau (NSB) for two hours yesterday to examine details of President Chen Shui-bian's (陳水扁) campaign tour on March 19 just before he was shot. The members were received by bureau Director-General Hsueh Shih-min (薜石民) and his deputy, Wang Chin-wang (王進旺). Hsueh said he welcomed the chance to meet with the commission members, but stressed that no written material will be provided to them until a constitutional dispute surrounding the body's formation is settled. A briefing on Chen's itiner-ary was given by Hsu Li-meng, head of the bureau's special services center. Commission spokeswoman Wang Ching-feng said the meeting was intended to give committee members a rough idea of what hap-pened on March 19 and that the commission will con-tinue to examine other details.
■ Health
Taiwan lagging in sex
The latest annual survey on sex by condom-maker Durex found that Taiwanese had sex only 80 times per year, ranking them fourth from the bottom of a list of 41 coun-tries. According to the 2004 Durex Global Sex Survey released yesterday, Taiwan beat out only Hong Kong (79), Singapore (79) and Japan (46). According to the survey of 350,000 people, the French top the global list with an average 137 times per year. The Taiwanese also cut to the chase faster than many other nationalities, spending an average of 16.3 minutes on foreplay, 3.4 minutes less than the global average. The survey found that 35 percent of respondents said that they always achieve orgasm; however, only 17 percent of women said this compared to the 45 percent of men who did. And 11 percent of Chinese respon-dents said they had never had an orgasm.
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