■ CRIME
Dead man shooting
Police arrested a man caught shooting drugs in a coffin on Monday night, a local daily reported yesterday. Chung Kuo-jen (鍾國仁), 32, of Taoyuan County, went to a cemetery on Monday night and snuck into an empty coffin, where he prepared to shoot heroin, the Chinese-language Liberty Times (the Taipei Times' sister paper) said. At about 11:30pm, patrol officers passing by the cemetery noticed a flickering light and decided to investigate. They found the light coming from a coffin, in which a man was sitting and injecting himself with a syringe. Chung was so shocked at the sight of the police he thought he was seeing ghosts, the report said. He was arrested and will undergo narcotics treatment at a rehabilitation center before serving time in jail.
■ POLITICS
Chen to do volunteer work
President Chen Shui-bian (陳水扁) will spend Sunday -- which marks the beginning of his last year in office -- cleaning up an oil spill off Pingtung County in keeping with an annual tradition he began in 2001. In previous years Chen marked the occasion by volunteering to feed elderly patients in hospitals, washing cars, picking up street litter, volunteering at a recycling plant and cleaning the beach. More people have been encouraged to do volunteer work since he initiated the campaign in 2001, Chen said, citing official data that showed the number of people below 30 years of age doing volunteer work has risen from 8,963 in 2002 to 27,071 last year. Chen also plans to spend the evening watching a children's play in his hometown in Kuantien Township (官田), Tainan County. The performance, which kicked off on Jan. 3, will conclude on Sunday. Chen has been subsidizing the group's performance in his hometown as well as in 18 townships in outlying islands.
■ LANGUAGES
Hoklo help online
A handbook explaining a new Romanization system for the Hoklo language -- commonly known as Taiwanese -- is now available online, the Ministry of Education announced yesterday. The press release followed an earlier announcement that a new computer input system for Hoklo based on the romanization system is downloadable on the ministry's Web site. The handbook, which can be downloaded in its entirety, explains syllabic structures and tones, among other aspects, of the new system, the ministry. The Web site can be found at www.edu.tw/EDU_WEB/Web/MANDR/index.php.
■ POLITICS
Ker Chien-ming files suit
Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) legislative caucus whip Ker Chien-ming (柯建銘) yesterday filed a lawsuit against 96 former Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) officials who served during the KMT era over their use of their special allowance funds. The KMT had filed a lawsuit on May 1 against 102 current and retired DPP government officials over the use of their special allowance funds, as part of its efforts to clear KMT presidential candidate Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九) of embezzlement charges. Ma was indicted by prosecutors in February on charges of embezzlement over his use of his mayoral special allowance fund during his term as Taipei mayor. Ker said he took the legal action on behalf of the party, adding that it was meant to counter the KMT's lawsuit against the DPP. "If we don't take legal action, it might seem that only DPP officials could be involved in irregularities in using their special allowance funds," Ker 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