■ SOCIETY
Dentists launch boycott
Dentists have launched a boycott of a Japanese dental material company whose boss recently made insulting remarks about Taiwan. The boycott came after Makoto Nakao, chief executive officer of GC Dental Equipment Corp, issued a public apology for his remarks on Sunday in a Japanese newspaper. The dentists feel Nakao was not sincere enough, said Chan Hsun-cheng (詹勳政), director-general of the Taiwan Dental Association. GC Dental Equipment earns NT$1 billion (US$30 million) from Taiwan every year, Chan said. Deputy Minister of the Department of Health Chen Shih-chung (陳時中), a former head of the dental association, expressed his support for the boycott, saying Nakao's remarks were inappropriate. After visiting Taiwan last month, Nakao wrote on his Web site that "fewer Europeans and Americans have breakfast at hotels in Taiwan" and that "businesses in Taiwan have gone to China. Taiwan now only has Japanese ladies who go to the National Palace Museum to see the things stolen from China."
■ HEALTH
Insurance fraud rising
Chopped fingers, faked deaths and murder are in decline but false medical claims are rising as Taiwan's insurance fraudsters change tactics, one expert said yesterday. Con artists have resorted to mutilations in a bid to claim personal insurance. "Typical cases include fingers, wrists and eyes," Wisher Wang of the Insurance Anti-Fraud Institute of Taiwan told a conference in Singapore organized by the Singapore Insurance Institute. Other scams have included murder to claim insurance, and also faked deaths. "Many of these individuals go into hiding in China or Southeast Asia," Wang said. But he said the number of these cases had declined. Since 1996 there have been more than 100 cases of personal mutilation, while fake deaths number fewer than 10 annually.
■ CRIME
Cambodia jails pair for drugs
Two Taiwanese men have been handed lengthy prison sentences in Cambodia, having been convicted of smuggling heroin bound for Hong Kong, a court official said yesterday. Yeh Chuan-hsueh was jailed for 30 years, while Lieh Chi-tsung received a 28-year term during a hearing on Monday, Judge Sao Meach said. The men were also fined tens of thousands of US dollars, he said. Police found 1.4kg of heroin in 48 year-old Yeh 's shoes and strapped to his thighs as he tried to board a flight from Phnom Penh International Airport to Hong Kong last October. Lieh, 58, who was trying to board the same flight, had 0.7kg of the drug in his shoes, officials said. The two men passed through X-ray machines undetected, but were caught because of new measures requiring security staff to check every Taiwanese passing through the airport after a spate of drug arrests. At least five other Taiwanese, including a 90 year-old man, have been arrested trying to smuggle heroin through the airport in the past year.
■ CULTURE
Famed pianist to perform
Pianist Alexander Gavrylyuk, the youngest pianist to win three major international competitions, will perform a second solo recital in Taipei today. "Taiwan has been a special place for me. And I will be glad to feel the passion of a Taiwanese audience again after six years," said Gavrylyuk, who arrived in Taipei on Monday. Born in Ukraine in 1984, he began playing at the age of seven and decided at nine that he wanted to be a professional pianist.
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