■ Crime
Fake wine suspects nabbed
The Tainan District Prosecutor's Office recently cracked a criminal ring that produced and sold some 240,000 bottles of fake red wine over the past two years, prosecutors said yesterday. Two suspects have been detained, the prosecutors said. The prosecutors and investigators searched several sites related to a food company and a winery in Kaohsiung and Tainan counties and seized counterfeit sorghum liquor and the fake red wine. The winery used grape juice, red wine extract and flavoring to produce the fake wine, which it sold to another company for NT$70 to NT$80 per bottle. The second company sold it for NT$120 to NT$150 per bottle, according to the prosecutors, who added that most of the estimated 240,000 bottles had been sold to catering services and had probably already been consumed.
■ Crime
Kaohsiung flights commence
A China Airlines Airbus A300 took off at around noon yesterday heading from Kaohsiung International Airport to Shanghai, marking the first Lunar New Year charter flight between the southern port city and China's largest city this year. This year's special direct cross-strait Lunar New Year charter flight services, which commenced on Tuesday, will last through to the end of the holidays early next month. Six carriers from each side of the Taiwan Strait will provide passengers with 192 special charter flights during the Lunar New Year holidays, up by 48 flights from the previous year's level.
■ Health
Center issues rabies warning
Taiwanese who are planning to visit China during the Lunar New Year holidays were warned yesterday about the risk of contracting rabies -- an infectious disease that killed 182 people in China last month. The Center for Disease Control called for potential visitors to China to avoid contact with dogs or other animals in order to avoid catching rabies, a disease caused by a virus found in the saliva of infected animals and transmitted to humans by bites or possibly by contamination of an open cut. According to a report released recently by the Chinese Ministry of Health, 217 people were bitten by dogs or other animals that were infected by the rabies virus across China last month. Of the total, 182, or more than 80 percent, died.
■ Media
No approval for BCC deal
The National Communications Commission yesterday refused approval of the Broadcasting Corporation of China's (BCC) share transfer to four companies apparently affiliated with the UFO Network, of which political commentator Jaw Shao-kong (趙少康) is the former president. It asked the BCC to fulfill several "essential requirements," including returning two radio frequencies that had been assigned to the corporation to launch a propaganda campaign against China. The commission also demands that the BCC hold a shareholder meeting to appoint a new board of directors and chairman as soon as the share transfer has been completed. Following this, another application to transfer shares must be submitted. Jaw, who was recently appointed BCC chairman, responded to the ruling yesterday by saying that the requests by the commission were too strict. He said that the commission should show more concern about the Liberty Times Group's interest in buying shares from Taiwan Television Company and some other media firms.
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