■ Society
Police may get electric prods
Minister of the Interior Lee Yi-yang (李逸洋) yesterday announced that his ministry will consider the idea of equipping the nation's police with electric prods and tear gas. That way, should police need to confront suspects in crowded areas, they would be able to bring them under control without using their guns. The use of electric prods or tear gas could also prevent bystanders from being accidentally injured, the minister said. Lee said the ministry will review the proposal and map out details on the project's budget and whether electric prods should be assigned to all police or just patrol units.
■ Foreign Affairs
Hong Kong praised for rescue
The nation's representative office in Hong Kong conveyed Taiwan's gratitude to the Hong Kong government over the weekend for having rescued three crewmen from a sinking Taiwan freighter in waters off Hong Kong's outlying islands of Kwo Chau (果洲). The Shun Fa No. 16 freighter was hit by rough seas on Tuesday while sailing past the Kwo Chau Islands, suffering serious damage. The three Taiwanese sailors contacted Hong Kong's marine rescue center for help. The center dispatched a helicopter to the scene, rescuing the Taiwanese before the ship sank. The three men all suffered minor injuries. They have returned to Taiwan after receiving medical treatment in Hong Kong.
■ Food
Japan food fair coming up
More than 50 Taiwanese businesses from the food industry will attend this year's Japan International Food Exhibition to be held in Tokyo from March 14 to March 17. Foodex Japan 2006 is the largest food fair of its kind in Asia and the world's third largest, officials from the Council of Agriculture (COA) said yesterday. Foodex Japan, held every two years, is expected to attract the participation of thousands of companies from 80 countries and areas this year. Japan is Taiwan's largest agricultural export market, according to the COA. Taiwan exported nearly US$1.3 billion worth of agricultural products to the country last year, an amount accounting for 36 percent of Taiwan's total agricultural exports for that year. A wide variety of Taiwan-produced premium agricultural goods -- such as tea, fruits and vegetables, rice, frozen foods, as well as processed foods and various meat products -- will be on display at the March fair, COA officials said.
■ Tourism
US tourists on the rise
The number of US citizens visiting Taiwan has been on the rise as efforts to promote such trips in the US have begun to bear fruit, officials from the Taipei Economic and Cultural Office (TECO) in New York reported. The number of US citizens who visited Taiwan in January totaled 31,248, marking an increase of 7.43 percent over the level of the same month a year earlier. Of the total US visitors, 20 percent were tourists, representing a remarkable increase over the average figure of 9 percent seen over the past three years, said Chang Cheng-yuan (張政源), director of the tourism section of TECO's New York office. Chang attributed the growth in the number of US tourists to Taiwan in January mainly to efforts made by Taiwan's government and private sector in attracting US tourists by increasing tourism publicity around the US in the past year. Chang said the TECO's New York office, China Airlines and two Taiwanese travel agencies jointly participated in the recent New York Times Tourism Show.
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