■ HEALTH
Cardiac stem cells found
Local researchers have proven that stem cells exist in human hearts, creating the possibility that stem-cell therapy could be used to restore damaged hearts. Researchers at Taipei Veterans General Hospital and National Taiwan University Hospital made the discovery while studying a heart discarded after an organ transplant. The extracted stem cells have since been cultivated in vitro and await further testing. Oscar Lee (李光申), leader of Taipei Veterans General Hospital’s stem-cell research team, said the stem cells proved effective in restoring damaged cardiac muscle cells. Lee said the findings could pave the way for stem-cell therapy for heart disease, as well as the development of a cardiac stem-cell mobilizer — a drug capable of stimulating the generation or release of stem cells in the human body. Cardiac stem cells have been found to exist in the hearts of mice and dogs, but proving their existence in the human heart has been difficult owing to the organ’s scarcity for research, Lee said.
■ CRIME
Murder suspects arrested
Hsinchu police yesterday arrested five men on suspicion of murdering a man and attempting to dispose of the body by destroying it with vitriol. Police said the main suspect, Pan Chuan-hsi (潘傳熙), a construction contractor, suspected one of his employees, Lin Ming-chan (林明展), of stealing from his house. They said Pan asked four of his workers to join him in beating up Lin. When the five found that Lin had died as a result of the severe beating, three of the workers fled, while Pan and another worker, Hsieh Chih-neng (謝智能), put the dead body in a plastic can and attempted to decompose the body with vitriol, police said. As the body was only partly decomposed, the two hid the body in Pan’s home, hoping it would naturally decompose later, police alleged. Investigations into Lin’s disappearance led police to raid Pan’s house late on Tuesday night.
■ POLITICS
Hau appoints new deputy
Taipei Mayor Hau Lung-bin (郝龍斌) announced yesterday the appointment of Wu Ching-chi (吳清基), commissioner of the city’s education department, as deputy mayor. Wu will take over from Samuel Wu (吳秀光), who resigned over allegations that he had accepted bribes from an arms company. Wu has denied any wrongdoing, but said he decided to step down as the reports had damaged his reputation and tarnished the image of the Taipei City Government. Hau also announced the appointment of eight other top-level officials after several municipal officials left their posts to join president-elect Ma Ying-jeou’s (馬英九) administration, including Taipei City Secretariat director Lee Sush-der (李述德), who will be the new finance minister.
■ EARTHQUAKE
Taitung County rattled
A magnitude 5.3 earthquake rattled Taitung County at 2:27am yesterday. No injuries were reported as of 8am, the Central Weather Bureau said. The earthquake had a depth of 10km and its epicenter was located 12.1km southwest of Taitung City, officials from the Seismology Center said. The earthquake had an intensity of 5 in Taimali Township (太麻里) in Taitung County, 3 in Sandimen (三地門) in Pingtung County and 2 in Pingtung City, Kaohsiung City and Kaohsiung County, the bureau said. Taitung County Fire Department officials urged residents to check their homes for plumbing damage.
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