■ SOCIETY
ArticleText = "Student dies in school
A Taipei junior-high school student was found dead yesterday morning in his school's bathroom with a plastic bag over his head. Teachers think the boy might have committed suicide because of academic pressure but the police have not determined the cause of death. The boy, surnamed Liu, was a ninth grader in Sanmin Junior High School in Neihu District. Teachers described him as a good student who was well-liked by his peers. His teacher said that Liu had told his friends he was having a difficult time dealing with school pressure. Liu's mother said he was an obedient son who never ran away from home. The school is offering counseling services to the students to help them deal with the trauma. The city's Department of Education has told the school to help Liu's family with the funeral.
■ CRIME
Taiwanese pleads guilty
A trusted member of a close-knit Taiwanese community in suburban Cincinnati, Ohio, entered guilty pleas on Monday to a series of rapes in which he used stun guns and chloroform to knock out the teenage daughters of his friends while they were home alone. Chien Tai-wu, a 50-year-old software designer, pleaded guilty in Hamilton County Common Pleas Court to two charges each of rape and attempted rape, five charges of aggravated burglary and one charge each of felonious assault and illegal use of a minor in nudity oriented material. Three charges of felonious assault and a charge of gross sexual imposition were dismissed. The judge set sentencing for Dec. 7. Wu was arrested in July and confessed when questioned by detectives. His trial was set to begin in January, but he changed his mind after a hearing last week in which the judge refused to throw out his statement to police.
■ SOCIETY
Taipower targeted
Hundreds of residents of Taipei's Jusheng Borough, Zhongshan District (中山), demonstrated in front of the Zhongshan Transformer Station yesterday to demand that Taiwan Power Co (Taipower) relocate the station. Many believe the station is responsible for a high cancer rate in the community. Borough chief Chen Hung-chang (陳鴻章) and Democratic Progressive Party Legislator Kuo Jeng-liang (郭正亮) said that if relocation is impossible, Taipower should convert the outdoor transformer station into an indoor one as soon as possible. "It is no coincidence that so many Jusheng residents have developed cancer," Kuo said. "Taipower should investigate this and compensate the residents accordingly." Station director Tsai Ta-tung (蔡大同) said the Zhongshan transformer is vital as it provides electricity for more than 10,000 homes and businesses. Relocation is scheduled in 2010, after the new Songshan transformer station opens, he said.
■ POLITICS
Ma pledges MRT expansion
Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) presidential candidate Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九) pledged yesterday to expand Taipei's transportation network to Taoyuan and finish the construction of the MRT lines that link Taipei City and Taipei County in eight years if elected. Taipei Mayor Hau Lung-bin (郝龍斌), Taipei County Commissioner Chou Hsi-wei (周錫瑋) and Taoyuan County Commissioner Chu Li-lun (朱立倫) joined Ma at the MRT Yongning Station where he promised to budget NT$160 billion (US$ 4.9 billion) to expand the network. He also promised to open the MRT system linking Taiwan Taoyuan International Airport to Taipei City in four years.
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