■ Society
Flower market extends time
Taipei flower market will be open 24 hours from Feb. 12 through Feb. 16 and an event will be held on Feb. 21 to greet the Lunar New Year, a Taipei flower market spokesman said yesterday. Taipei Flower Auction Manager Chen Ken-wang (陳根旺) said the 24-hour opening period will allow people to purchase flowers for the Lunar New Year and added that six lessons on how to make flower arrangements will be offered daily during that period. The flower market will open Feb. 17 from 1am to 1pm, will be closed from Feb. 18 through Feb. 22 and reopen on Feb. 23. On Feb. 21, a turnip painting activity for 30 kindergarten and elementary school students and a cat-tail willow peeling activity for 30 pairs of people will be held at 10am and 11am, respectively. Chen said that cat-tail willows, kumquat, guzmania and moth orchids are all favorites for the Spring Festival.
■ Crime
Bank chief may be detained
Taipei Prosecutor Lu Hsiao-yun (盧筱筠) yesterday filed a request to detain The Chinese Bank (中華銀行) vice president Wang Lin-chiao (王令僑), but decided to release Yi-feng Asset Management Co chairman Lawrence Wang (王令興) on NT$5 million (US$152,000) bail. Late last night, judges decided to grant Lu's detention request. Prosecutors said they discovered that The Chinese Bank had sold bad debts to Yi-feng Asset Management at "unreasonably low prices," resulting in massive losses of NT$47.9 million for the bank (US$1.5 million). Lu also released Yi-feng's general manager Lee Teh-yang (李德洋) on NT$1 million bail yesterday. Both Wang Lin-chiao and Lawrence Wang are the sons of the founder and owner of the Rebar Asia Pacific Group Wang You-theng (王又曾), who fled abroad with his fourth wife Wang Chin She-ying (王金世英) before the financial scandal erupted.
■ Crime
MOFA cracks down on fraud
The Ministry of Foreign Affairs yesterday said that it would work closely with the National Police Agency to crack down on Taiwanese fraudsters in South Korea lest they tarnish the nation's image. Ministry officials said that from September to last month, South Korean police arrested a number of Taiwanese fraudsters who had traveled to the country to claim fraudulently obtained money. Taiwan's representative office in Seoul estimated that there were 14 such cases involving 30 Taiwanese. The fraudsters allegedly called up South Korean residents to say that their children had been kidnapped and demanded a ransom. Other criminals used forged credit cards, they added. The ministry issued a public reminder that those who plan to travel to South Korea should not collect money on behalf of other people.
■ Society
Lu lauds assistance project
Vice President Annette Lu (呂秀蓮) said yesterday that a government project aimed at helping women which had been launched at her request had performed fairly well in recent years. "I set the goal of helping 100,000 women enter the job market in 2006 and 2007. As of last September, 90,000 women had found jobs," Lu said in a statement. The vice president said that the purpose of the project was to provide women with the necessary assistance to help them conciliate family responsibilities and their careers and to help housewives reintegrate the job market.
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
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
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