■ Religion
Condom nun sparks outrage
Posters showing a Catholic nun holding a condom as part of an anti-AIDS campaign in Taiwan have been recalled and destroyed after protests from angry church members, an official said yesterday. The posters, put up recently at several Taipei mass transit stations, feature a woman dressed as a nun saying "Although I don't use it, I know [what a condom is.]" The aim was to promote the use of condoms to prevent the spread of AIDS. However Taipei's Sexually-Transmitted Disease Control Center, which commissioned the poster, was forced to apologize and remove the advertisements earlier this month after protests from Catholic groups. All posters and digital files were destroyed, an official at the center said.
■ Health
Chemical in food scrutinized
The Department of Health (DOH) announced yesterday that it will formally regulate, with immediate effect, foods and related products that contain polychlorinated biphenyl, which can be harmful to the health if ingested over the long term. The program will target all foods and related products on the domestic market, including dairy products and drinks, meat products, eggs, seafoods, baby foods and paper food containers, said Chen Lu-hung (陳陸宏), director of the DOH's Bureau of Food Sanitation. Repeated violators of the regulation will face fines ranging from NT$30,000 to NT$150,000, depending on the seriousness of the offenses, Chen said. According to the DOH, polychlorinated biphenyl accumulates in the body if ingested over a long period, causing skin rashes, respiratory problems, damage to the immune system, gout, anemia and liver lesions.
■ Crime
Alleged drug dealer caught
A mobile squad of the Coast Guard Administration arrested a suspected drug dealer in Taoyuan yesterday, seizing 2kg of heroin with a street value of over NT$100 million (US$3.1 million). The squad captain, Tsai Yuan-ching (蔡源慶), said they had been stalking the suspect, identified as Chen Yen-chun (陳彥均), 25, for three months. Chen owns a mansion and four expensive cars. Chen allegedly delivered drugs to his distributors twice a week, according to the squad. More than 30 coast guard officers were mobilized for the arrest. A further investigation aimed at tracing other drug sources is now underway.
■ Education
MAC wary of Chinese offer
A high-ranking official of the Mainland Affairs Council (MAC) said yesterday that the Chinese government's offer to lower tuition fees for Taiwanese students is a united-front tactic aimed at dividing Taiwan's people. The offer, which takes effect next month, was announced by China's Taiwan Affairs Office (TAO), which said that Taiwanese students attending China's universities will be charged the same tuition fees as Chinese students. In addition to lowering tuition fees for Taiwanese students, the TAO said that it will provide scholarships specifically for Taiwanese students by setting aside 7 million Chinese yuan (US$863,000) per year. The MAC official expressed concern that the preferential treatment might put pressure on the Taiwanese government when considering whether to accept qualifications granted by Chinese schools. The official said that Taiwan is an open society, so it could not prohibit students from studying in China.
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