■ Crime
Kidnapped couple escapes
A Taiwanese couple in the Philippines escaped from their kidnappers yesterday, two days after they were seized shortly after arriving in Manila, a Philippine police report said. The couple, surnamed Liu, escaped from a beach resort where the kidnappers had taken them in Cabanga, Zambales Province, 185km northwest of Manila. The couple immediately sought the help of local residents who brought them to the village chief, the police report said. The report said upon discovering that their victims had escaped, two of the kidnappers fled the resort while one surrendered to the police. It said the couple had been picked up by another Taiwanese at Manila's Ninoy Aquino International Airport.
■ Politics
Lee wants to speak in Japan
Former president Lee Teng-hui (李登輝) wants to give a lecture at a Japanese university during a planned visit in May, the Tokyo Shimbun reported yesterday. Japanese Foreign Ministry spokesman Akira Chiba, however, said Lee had not formally applied for a visa and nothing had been decided about such a trip. "We have to see what he wants to do, if he wants to come at all," Chiba said. The daily said Lee planned to give a speech on cultural matters at a university in Akita, northern Japan, but would not pay a visit to Tokyo's Yasukuni Shrine, where his brother is among the war dead honored. Chief Cabinet Secretary Shinzo Abe said last month that Tokyo would deal with any visa request from Lee "appropriately in line with our basic policy toward Taiwan."
■ Politics
Most assets in trust
Government Information Office Minister Cheng Wen-tsang (鄭文燦) said yesterday that most heads of government offices have completed putting their assets into trusts. Cheng said regulations stipulate that the Cabinet's 105 heads of offices were required to have completed the process of putting their assets into trusts before Tuesday. As of yesterday, 80 of them had finished the process, four have not completed the process because of personnel matters and 21 do not need to put their assets in trust because they don't meet the requirements, Cheng said.
■ Weather
Cold front on the way
The Central Weather Bureau said yesterday that the recent spell of good weather will soon be over. A frontal system will bring wind and rain to northern Taiwan with temperatures continuing to drop and rain increasing until at least Sunday. According to forecaster Wang Yao-hua (王耀華), the system will bring rain, while temperatures in the north will drop to around 14 degrees Celsius to 15 degrees Celsius. The lowest temperatures are expected on Sunday, when they could fall as low as 13 degrees Celsius.
■ Tourism
MAC warns on tourism plan
In response to China's announcement yesterday that it is prepared to introduce measures to allow Chinese citizens to travel to Taiwan, the Mainland Affairs Council (MAC) yesterday said that it remains to be seen whether China is sincere about the plan. The director of the MAC's department of economic affairs, Fu Don-cheng (傅棟成), yesterday said practical steps to implement the plan would have to be hammered out through government-to-government negotiations. A unilateral announcement by the Chinese authorities on the measures "is still far from realizing the policy," Fu said.
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