■ Crime
SEF to help woman's family
The Straits Exchange Foundation (SEF) said late on Friday night it would help the family of a murdered Taiwanese businesswoman travel to Shanghai to deal with her affairs. Chen Yi-chun (陳怡君), a 30-year-old jeans designer from Taipei City, was found dead at her residence in Shanghai on Friday. A preliminary investigation by Shanghai police showed that she was murdered during the course of a robbery, a foundation spokesman said. The foundation will help the family members with paperwork and other requirements so that they can go to Shanghai as soon as possible, the spokesman said. The foundation, a quasi-official organization authorized to handle exchanges with China in the absence of official ties with Beijing, has asked its Chinese counterpart to urge the Shanghai police to fully investigate Chen's death.
■ Health
Syringes offered in Tainan
Drug addicts in Tainan County will be able to get syringe kits and needles from vending machines in 16 locations starting this week, a Tainan County official said. Tainan County Deputy Magistrate Yen Chun-tzuo (顏純左) said on Friday the vending machines will offer a package containing a pair of syringes with needles, two condoms and rubbing alcohol swabs for NT$10. He added that the county government will sign agreements with convenience stores to also provide free syringes and needles to drug addicts on a 24-hour basis. The Tainan county government implemented a program in October 2005 to supply free needles to drug users in an attempt to curb the spread of AIDS. Although some critics see the measure as encouraging drug users to continue their habits, the county government said it would expand the program, Yen said. He described the service as successful because the number of HIV carriers in Taiwan dropped from 3,392 in 2005 to 2,981 last year.
■ Politics
`Children's Day' mulled
The government is considering designating May 15 as "Children's Day" to raise public awareness of threats to children's safety in public and private places, Ministry of the Interior Lee Yi-yang (李逸洋) said yesterday. Lee said his ministry recently called a meeting with the Ministry of Education, the Ministry of Justice, the Ministry of Economic Affairs, the Department of Health and the National Communications Committee to discuss the issue amid an increase in the number of accidents involving children. Twenty-three kindergartners died on May 15, 1992, when the minibus transporting them to a picnic in Taipei burst into flames, sending a great shock throughout the country.
■ Politics
Assets vote drive stepped up
The Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) is gearing up to solicit greater public support for its campaign demanding that the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) return its stolen assets. According to DPP officials, the party will set up booths today in cities and counties across the country to win further public endorsement for its campaign. At the booth erected on the plaza in front of Taipei Railway Station, carnations will be presented to people who sign the petition, a DPP official added. The DPP said it had collected over 750,000 signatures for the campaign as of Friday, and predicted it may hit the target for the referendum process' second-phase, one-million signatures, next month or in July.
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