■ CRIME
Taiwanese jailed in Vietnam
A Vietnamese court has sentenced a Taiwanese man to 10 years in jail for smuggling more than US$1.3 million in diamonds into the country, state media said yesterday. The Ho Chi Minh City People's Court sentenced Chen Hsin-hsiung, 45, on Tuesday for illegally importing 15,182 diamonds and selling more than 9,000 for more than US$1.3 million, the Cong An Nhan Dan (People's Police) daily reported. Chen was arrested in September 2004 when customs officials at the airport in Ho Chi Minh City discovered the undeclared diamonds in his luggage. He had arrived on a flight from Taiwan. Police later raided his house and jewelry store in central Ho Chi Minh City, seizing more than 1,900 diamonds and about 150 pieces of jewelry, which the judge ruled would be forfeited to the state.
■ CRIME
NPA raids fake sock warehose
The National Police Agency's intellectual property rights division said yesterday it had cracked down on a counterfeit ring that was producing fake big-name sports socks for online purchase. The police raided a warehouse in Shulin (樹林), Taipei County, on Monday, where they discovered nearly 1,000 pairs of counterfeit Nike, Adidas, Puma and Levi's sports socks. They arrested a man surnamed Lai, the suspected ringleader. The police referred Lai to the Banciao District Prosecutors' Office for further questioning. Lai is suspected of selling the counterfeit sports socks on the Internet and delivering them to online customers by mail, police said. His products were described as being as good as the originals, with identical labels and all the latest styles available.
■ TOURISM
Visitor statistics released
Thirty-four tourist spots have attracted more than 18 million local and foreign tourists from January to June, statistics from the Taipei City Department of Budget, Accounting and Statistics showed yesterday. National Taiwan Democracy Memorial Hall was the most popular tourist spot in the city, attracting more than 6 million people during the period, followed by National Palace Museum and Taipei Zoo, with about 1.6 million. The department said that the number of visitors to the city had increased 9.8 percent from last year, with about 100,000 tourists visiting the attractions daily. Longshan Temple attracted about 8,000 people every day, while the Taipei 101 observatory deck received 3,000.
■ ENVIRONMENT
EPA fines three companies
Six companies were recently fined by the Environmental Protection Administration (EPA) for excessive water use, an EPA official said yesterday. The three companies -- Formosa Plastics Corp (台塑), Formosa Chemicals and Fiber Corp (台塑石化) and Nan Chung Petrochemical Corp (南中石化) -- used excessive water to the tune of 10.1 percent, 4.7 percent and 20 percent respectively, a survey conducted by the EPA between July 3 and July 15 showed, the official said. The EPA fined them for failing to comply with the guidelines on water usage stipulated in an environmental impact assessment made by the EPA to demand that companies conserve water, the official said. Formosa Plastics was fined NT$1 million (US$30,500), while Formosa Chemicals and Fiber was fined NT$850,000 and Nan Chung Petrochemical NT$650,000, the official said. EPA will conduct another survey before Dec. 31 to ensure the companies are complying with the guidelines.
■ HEALTH
Thousands fail to get tested
During the past three years, approximately 33 percent of women over 30 in Taipei -- about 250,000 -- have failed to take a cervical smear test despite an increasing number of women taking such tests, a city health department official said yesterday. Starting in 1995, the government began to provide free annual tests under the National Health Insurance program for women aged 30 and above. Chao Kuan-chung (趙灌中), a medical doctor at the Taipei Veterans General Hospital's Department of Obstetrics and Gynecology, said the test can help identify cervical cancer in its early stages, thus improving the effectiveness of patient treatment. The disease is curable if found in early stages, Chao said, urging women to undergo regular Pap smears.
■ CRIME
Principal's obituary forged
Police are searching for a person who distributed an obituary for a university principal who is still alive, a newspaper said yesterday. Hsia Cheng-hua (夏誠華), principal of Hsuan Chuang University in Hsinchu, began to receive telephone calls last week from friends who had learned that he had "died." The callers said they had seen Hsia's obituary, which said the 53-year-old had been "called by the Lord." United Daily News reported that when Hsia died, his six children were at his side. But the names of Hsia's children in the obituary were the names of staff members at the university. Although Hsia scrambled to correct the rumor, some people sent wreaths to the funeral parlor where the funeral was said to be taking place. Hsinchu police are hunting for the person who distributed the obituary, and planned to charge him or her with falsifying documents.
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