■ HEALTH
Hau hails smoking ban
Taipei Mayor Hau Lung-bin (郝龍斌) commended restaurants and volunteers for their work in helping promote a tobacco-free environment. Speaking at a citation award ceremony at Taipei City Hall yesterday, Hau said that since the Tobacco Hazard Control Act was implemented in 1997, the city government has been promoting a tobacco-free environment in public places, including restaurants, with the assistance of civic organizations such as the John Tung Foundation. To date, there are more than 2,600 restaurants and 311 workplaces around Taipei in which smoking is banned, Hau said, adding that those results are the best for any city in Taiwan. The mayor said that cigarettes contain some 4,000 chemicals, more than 40 of which are carcinogenic. Hau also cited a study conducted by the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention as saying that people exposed to second-hand smoke had a 30 percent higher chance of getting cancer. Noting that there is a global trend toward creating tobacco-free environments, Hau said many places, including California and Hong Kong are even promoting outdoor tobacco-free environments. He said there was still significant room for improvement in Taipei.
■ TRANSPORT
Four die in car crash
A car accident in Taoyuan County early yesterday in which four men died is suspected to have been caused by drunk driving, a spokesman for the county police said. The spokesman said that the four victims -- Chiang Yen-tai (江衍泰), Chiang Yen-tsung (江衍聰), Chien Chuan-shou (簡傳嘉) and Lin Chih-chung (林志中) -- died after their car, traveling at high speed, crashed into four utility poles before coming to a stop. He said all four occupants were thrown out of the heavily damaged vehicle and died on the spot because of severe brain damage and other injuries. It was not known who was driving. The spokesman said the four men had apparently been drinking heavily on Monday night before driving across the Kanchin Bridge in Dasi Township (大溪), Taoyuan County. The car was traveling at high speed down a hill when the driver lost control of the car, causing it to veer off the road and crash.
■ IMMIGRATION
Officer charged with abuse
Prosecutors yesterday requested an 18-month prison term for an immigration officer who had been indicted on charges of abusing detainees. The Taichung Prosecutors' Office said that while on duty at a provisional detention center in a Taichung City police station in late August, Ma Yun-chieh (馬韻傑) shackled and assaulted a detainee from Vietnam for making too much noise before sending him to solitary confinement. In early October, Ma allegedly restricted the movement of a Vietnamese detainee and set the air conditioner to an unbearably low temperature in yet another incident of abuse. Ma denied abusing or assaulting the detainees.
■ TOURISM
Bureau bids for fireworks
Tourism Bureau officials said yesterday that the bureau would bid for the right to stage a New Year fireworks show on top of Taipei 101, one of the highest skyscrapers in the world. Bureau Deputy Director Hsieh Wei-chun (謝謂君) said that as the show would cost up to NT$20 million (US$618,000), it would have to find sponsors to help pay for it. The bureau denied plans that it would use the show to promote the nation's UN bid. Hsieh said the theme would focus on tourism.
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