■ IMMIGRATION
Rules tightened for Chinese
Beginning next month, Chinese immigrants must provide proof that they earn at least NT$17,280 a month and have savings of at least NT$414,720 to be considered eligible for permanent residency, the Ministry of the Interior said in press release. The previous savings requirement -- still in effect until the end of this month -- was NT$380,160, the ministry said. The changes are necessary to ensure that Chinese immigrants, the largest immigrant group in the country, won't pose an undue strain on social services, the ministry said.
■ TRANSPORT
Yuchang road to open
The Directorate General of Highways said yesterday that the Yuchang Highway, a 36.3km road that crosses the coastal mountain range on the east coast, will open to traffic on Saturday. Director-General James Chen (陳晉源) said the highway would open to the public at 2pm after an opening ceremony is held at 10am. Taiwan Mobile Corp will install a wireless base station near the Yuchang Tunnel today. FarEasTone and Chunghwa Telecom have already installed facilities, Chen said.
■ CRIME
Arson case `solved': police
The Kaohsiung City Police Bureau announced yesterday that its officers had solved an arson case that left four members of a family dead and two others injured in a laundry on June 5. Bureau Director-General Tsai Yi-jen (蔡以仁) told a press conference that a suspect was detained on Tuesday night. Although the suspect, a Cheng Shiu University lecturer surnamed Chen, had remained silent during questioning, evidence collected from his house, witness statements and Chen's mental health record had convinced prosecutors that he was the culprit. Surveillance footage from nearby convenience stores taken on the night of the fire showed a man running out of the alley where the shop was located seconds before the fire broke out, Tsai said. Police claimed that Chen's medical records showed that he suffers from delusions and was inclined to commit arson or murder.
■ POLITICS
Beauty pageant targets UN
The Taiwan United Nations Alliance is planning to hold the first "Mr and Miss UN" beauty pageant in September to help boost the nation's bid to join the UN using the name "Taiwan." Candidates must be aged between 18 and 30. The two winners will travel to the US and join the country's UN bid when the annual UN General Assembly meeting is held in September. The Democratic Progressive Party has collected enough signatures on the initial petition for a proposed referendum on using the name "Taiwan" to join the UN. The Referendum Review Committee will hold a public hearing on June 22 to determine the legality of the proposed initiative. The DPP is required to collect more than 820,000 signatures on a second petition to make the proposal valid.
■ HEALTH
`Zongzi' warning issued
A Tzu-Chi Buddhist General Hospital dietician urged people to refrain from eating more than three zongzi (粽子) a day. The Dragon Boat Festival, which falls on June 19 this year, is the traditional time to eat the pyramid-shaped dumplings made of glutinous rice stuffed with meat, peanuts, egg yolk or other fillings and wrapped in bamboo leaves. Lai Chu-ching (賴淑菁), who works at the hospital's Taichung County branch, said each zongzi contains between 400 and 600 calories.
■ CRIME
Fraud busters to visit Seoul
The National Police Agency (NPA) plans to send a delegation of experienced fraud busters to Seoul tomorrow to attend a seminar on strategies to fight various forms of fraud. The delegation, to be headed by police official Liu Kuo (劉闊), will share their experience with South Korean police, who are having trouble fighting fraud committed by cross-border syndicates, particularly those based in China, an NPA official said. Several senior South Korean criminal investigators recently visited the NPA to study Taiwan's approach to fighting crimes committed by fraudsters in China after cross-strait fraud rings began expanding their operations from Taiwan to South Korea, the official said. "Cross-strait fraud rings have been committing fraudulent crimes by phone or using Internet `Trojan horse' programs to steal personal information," he said.
■ HEALTH
Tests fail to detect cancer
A woman in Hualien County has been diagnosed with cervical cancer six years after she contracted the disease, even though she has had an annual pap smear for the past five years, doctors said yesterday. The 33-year-old mother of two displayed normal results for her pap smears for five consecutive years, doctors said. Cervical cancer was detected only after her sixth annual pap smear this year, they said. Liao Chi-yuan (廖基元), a gynecologist and obstetrician at Hualien's Mennonite Christian Hospital, said that there was only a 60 percent to 80 percent accuracy rate for conventional pap smear screening that uses a manual method to review samples. Liao suggested that women make sure their pap smears are reviewed using computer-aided imaging, which is not covered by National Health Insurance.
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