■ POLITICS
Stolen vehicle rate drops
Insurance companies paid out NT$600 million (US$18.6 million) less in compensation for stolen vehicles last year thanks to a drop in car and motorcycle thefts, figures released yesterday by the Criminal Investigation Bureau showed. The number of stolen motorcycles and cars dropped by 43,000 last year compared with 2005. The car theft rate fell 31 percent and the motorcycle theft rate dropped more than 20 percent, officials said, adding that the drops translated into a decline of NT$2.5 billion in property losses. Many insurance companies have long refused to provide motorcycle theft insurance because of the high theft rate.
■ POLITICS
GIO launches ad contest
Government Information Office (GIO) Minister Shieh Jhy-wey (謝志偉) launched a national audiovisual contest on Monday for promotional campaigns about Taiwan. Shieh introduced the "Wow! eye Taiwan" competition at the Affiliated Senior High School of National Taiwan Normal University. How Taiwan promotes itself to foreigners is very important, Shieh said. He said he hoped the competition would attract audio and video works that would introduce Taiwan to foreigners and Taiwanese alike, and that young people would be encouraged to share their visions of Taiwan. He said any individual or group interested in creating a positive image of Taiwan could submit an entry in the four categories -- music video, animation, short film and documentary. There were no limits on gender, age or nationality of contestants, he said, adding that the winner would receive NT$500,000.
■ CRIME
NIA sponsors seminar
The National Immigration Agency will hold a seminar on human smuggling rings and travel document verification tomorrow. Academics, airline representatives, diplomatic personnel and trade office officials will attend the seminar to discuss efforts to combat illegal human smuggling gangs, agency officials said. Since the agency was inaugurated in January, Taiwan Taoyuan International Airport officials have uncovered 140 cases of forged or counterfeit travel documents used by smuggling rings, the officials said.
■ ENERGY
Changhua builds turbines
Changhua County plans to have 244 wind turbines built in its Changbin Industrial Park, the county government said on Monday. Officials said construction contracts have been awarded to four wind power firms, including state-owned Taiwan Power Co (Taipower). Ninety-eight of the turbines will be on land and 146 will be in shallow waters off the coast, the officials said. Taipower has completed 23 turbines, which began commercial operations on April 22, and it will have 32 units completed by the end of this year. When all the 244 windmills are in operation, they will have a combined installed capacity of 696,700 kilowatts, the officials said.
■ POLITICS
TSU's Lai targets fuel firm
Taiwan Solidarity Union (TSU) Legislator Lai Shin-yuan (賴幸媛) yesterday urged the Cabinet to levy a windfall tax on the Formosa Group -- the sole private-sector petroleum provider -- to prevent it from profiteering and to help curb fuel prices. Premier Chang Chun-hsiung (張俊雄) promising to study the idea. Lai said the tax should be imposed because the Formosa Group had refused to participate in a government fuel-price stabilization program. Lai said the group made more than NT$50 billion (US$1.54 billion) in profits so far this year.
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