■ Politics
Fire kills Japanese boy
A fire broke out in a Keelung Road highrise in Taipei last night. Half of the city's firefighting force was mobilized to fight the fire, cable television reported. As of press time, the fire was under control. Witnesses were reported by local television media as saying that an explosion was
heard at 5:30pm. Soon after, smoke appeared from a 15th floor apartment believed to be owned by a Japanese couple. The body of a six-year-old Japanese child was found by firefighters, while six injured residents were sent to Taipei Medical University Hospital. "The child was mentally disabled, and did not follow the mother out of the burning apartment," a firefighter told TV reporters, who said the child was found dead in bed. Hospital spokesman Oung Ya-ling (翁亞泠) confirmed that five individuals had been admitted, including the dead child's mother and two-year-old sister. The wounded were all in fair condition. A firefighter said that language difficulties contributed to the delay in rescuing the boy. The cause of the fire was unclear.
■ Politics
US officials tour the nation
Three members of the US House of Representatives are currently visiting Taiwan, a Ministry of Foreign Affairs official said yesterday. Eddie Bernice Johnson, a Texas Democrat, who arrived in the country on Sunday, will visit President Chen Shui-bian (陳水扁), the Taiwan branch of US-based Texas Instruments, and American Institute in Taiwan Director Stephen Young during his stay. He will also meet with leaders from various fields to exchange views on bilateral ties between Taiwan and the US, cross-strait relations, and regional and military security in Asia. Johnson will also ride the high speed rail to Taichung and Tainan, the official said. Meanwhile, G.K. Butterfield, a Democrat from North Carolina and Donna Christensen, a Virginia Democrat, arrived in Taipei yesterday for their first visit to the nation. They will meet various officials and visit the Kaohsiung Harbor Bureau, the Southern Taiwan Science Park and the navy's Kidd-class destroyers.
■ Society
Millions yet to file returns
More than 50 percent of taxpayers have yet to file their income tax returns, with only four working days left before Thursday's deadline, the Ministry of Finance said yesterday. As of Friday, only 2.49 million out of a total of 5.2 million taxpayers had filed their tax returns, ministry officials said. Of those filers, 809,545 have filed their returns in the traditional manner at tax offices, 249,603 filed via a bar code system and another 1.44 million filed their returns over the Internet, the officials said.
■ Health
Dentist warns on dentures
Dentures made with cheap metal will harm their wearers in the long term, a dentist warned yesterday amid reports that many local dentists use poor quality false teeth made in China. Hsu Chi-chih, a dentist and associate professor at the Chung Shan Medical University in Taichung, said that false teeth used to be made with alloy and covered with a porcelain or ceramic crown to make them look like real teeth. The alloy used for the inner part of false teeth is usually made with gold and platinum, which are stable and closely compatible with the gums of the wearers. As gold and platinum are expensive, Hsu said, some dentures are being made with a cheap alloy of beryllium, chromite and nickel, which is half the price of gold and platinum. However, these may release harmful metal isotopes, Hsu 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