■ Business
KMT to open service center
Following an announcement by the quasi-government Straits Exchange Foundation that it will open a service center next Tuesday for China-based Taiwan businesspeople, the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) yesterday announced that it will establish a similar center in Taiwan for such businesspeople. The KMT center's chairman, Chiang Pin-kung (江丙坤), said the center will handle issues the government did not address and help improve the investment environment in China. "The KMT's `Taiwanese Businessmen Service Center' will provide counseling services to individuals. We will negotiate with China on issues including investment policies and cross-strait trade," Chiang said in a statement yesterday.
■ Crime
Police nab fraudsters
Kaohsiung police raided a fast-food restaurant in Taichung City, central Taiwan yesterday, nabbing six people believed to be members of a cross-strait fraud ring that has swindled money from Taiwanese citizens by sending fraudulent messages or kidnapping. Investigators with the Kaohsiung Police Department found that the ring, led by a man surnamed Shih, had six key operators which have extorted at least NT$100 million (US$3.1 million) over the past year in Taiwan by kidnapping people or by operating a variety of fraud schemes, including sending fraudulent messages saying that people's credit cards had been stolen and that thieves had spent a fortune on the stolen cards, or saying that the card holders have outstanding debts to pay. The victims were fooled into remitting money to the fraudsters' accounts, opened at banks nationwide using counterfeit IDs. The ring members used leased cars as transportation and they changed their mobile phone numbers and SIM cards often, the police said.
■ Cross-strait
Cakes, tarts wow Xiamen
A promotion of sun cakes and pineapple tarts, two famous Taiwanese snacks, was held in Xiamen yesterday. The promotion, which was organized by the Chinese Nationalist Party's (KMT) Taichung chapter, was aimed at facilitating "social exchanges" across the Taiwan Strait and to mark the end of a visit by a chapter delegation. Taichung Pastry Trade Association president Yu Yu-i (游有義) said 10,000 sun cakes and pineapple tarts, which were chosen from the best pastry shops in Taichung, were available for people to sample at the event. If they are well-received by the visitors, Yu said, the association would consider establishing a manufacturing base in Xiamen for the Chinese market.
■ Taiwan
Chiu girl's doctors charged
Prosecutors yesterday indicted two Taipei Municipal Jen Ai Hospital doctors Liu Chi-hua (劉奇樺) and Lin Chih-nan (林致男) with "professional error leading to the death" and "forgery of public documents" for their mistreatment of a five-year old girl, surnamed Chiu, who was beaten up by her father. After being beaten into a coma by her father the girl was rushed to the hospital where doctors Liu and Lin were on duty in the emergency unit. Liu and Lin refused to treat the little girl and she had to be transferred to a Taichung County hospital 200km away, where she later died. The prosecution said the two doctors not only failed to diagnose the girl's injury, but they also forged her medical record.
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