■CRIME
New jail needed: premier
A new location for the Taipei Detention House in Tucheng (土城), Taipei County, is urgently needed to solve an overcrowding problem, Premier Liu Chao-shiuan (劉兆玄) said on Thursday. The detention house is used to incarcerate lawsuit suspects and people serving short prison sentences. Lee Mung-tung, director-general of the detention house, said that inmates numbered around 3,600 as of the end of last month, while the capacity should be only about 2,100. Overcrowding in the women’s section is even more serious, with capacity at 198 percent — still lower than the 302 percent recorded last year, he said. Liu said an earlier government plan to move the detention house to a former Ministry of National Defense ammunition depot in the county has raised objections from local residents, but he said the government would continue to communicate with the public to seek its consent and cooperation.
■TRANSPORTATION
TRA battles scalpers
The Taiwan Railway Administration (TRA) said yesterday it had installed a verification mechanism in its voice ticketing system to prevent scalpers from booking tickets. The mechanism will start working on Monday. The administration has already installed a similar mechanism in its online ticketing system after it found hackers were buying up all the train tickets by staying logged into the system. They were able to call into its voice ticketing system and complete each purchase within 30 seconds, the TRA said. The verification mechanism will raise the difficulty, it said. The TRA said buyers would be given a verification number when entering the system. They would then have to key in their verification number. The phone line will be cut off automatically if the person enters the wrong number three times. Meanwhile, the administration will open both the online and voice ticketing systems on Friday for those wanting to book tickets for the Mid-Autumn Festival holidays, which begin on Sept. 12.
■CRIME
Flyers cause rumpus
A former school employee was prosecuted by Kaohsiung District Prosecutors’ Office on Wednesday for allegedly distributing flyers on campus defaming a colleague. Liao Wan-ju (廖婉茹) was the director of general affairs at Kaomei College of Health Care and Management when in November she ordered a student to produce flyers reading: “Dogs and Tang Sheng-ming (唐勝明) are not allowed on campus.” She and the student, surnamed Yang (楊), distributed and posted the flyers, prosecutors said. Tang, the director of educational affairs, filed lawsuits against them, but withdrew the suit against Yang after the student said that she made the flyers under Liao’s instructions. Tang said that he suspected Liao acted out of dissatisfaction with his criticism of her work performance. The school dismissed Liao from her job in January.
■HEALTH
Free liver tests on offer
National Taiwan University Hospital in Taipei is to offer free liver disease screening tests this morning, while the Kaohsiung Medical University Chung-ho Memorial Hospital will hold a free lecture on liver health later today. Registration for screening for people aged 21 and over will be held from 8am to 11am for a maximum of 50 people. Meanwhile, the Kaohsiung Medical University Hospital, in cooperation with the Hepatitis B Foundation’s Taiwan branch, will hold an open lecture today to give information on hepatitis B symptoms, screening procedures and prevention.
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