■DEFENSE
Harpoon sales confirmed
The Ministry of National Defense confirmed on Wednesday that the US has decided to sell 60 Harpoon Air Launched anti-ship missiles to Taipei, in a move seen as a precursor to ending a de facto freeze on US arms sales to the nation. Ministry spokeswoman Lisa Chih (池玉蘭) told the Central News Agency that Taipei made the request to buy the missiles, worth US$89.7 million, last year and that delivery is scheduled for next year. “This arms sale is not among the eight items we requested this year. So why its delivery has been moved forward, we have yet to find out,” she was quoted as saying. The US halted arms sales to Taiwan last year in what analysts saw as a bid to curry favor with China ahead of US President George W. Bush’s trip to the Beijing Olympics.
■TRAFFIC
Taipei vows crackdown
Taipei City’s police department yesterday vowed to clamp down on drivers who park within 10m of bus stops and endanger the safety of bus passengers. More than 10,000 drivers were fined up to NT$6,000 last month for parking within 10m of bus stops in Taipei, the department said in a statement. The department said there was a growing number of parking violations around bus stops, and warned drivers that it would clamp down on such violations to protect bus passengers’ rights. The department added that the Taipei City Government had increased the number of low-floor buses and Fu-Kang Buses — public vehicles that transport disabled people — to improve service for the disabled and elderly.
■CRIME
Smuggling suspects arrested
Police on Wednesday arrested five suspects who allegedly smuggled stolen heavy motorbikes from Japan and made more than NT$50 million (US$1.6 million) from the sale of the bikes. The arrests were made as a result of collaboration with Japanese police and the International Criminal Police Organization. Japanese police also apprehended two Taiwanese at Tokyo Narita International Airport on Aug. 11 in connection with the case, while local police arrested suspects in Taichung City and Kaohsiung County. The suspects confessed they had smuggled stolen motorbikes from Japan on four occasions, bringing dozens of bikes each time, the police said. They recovered 14 engines, some of which were reported as stolen in Japan between 2002 and early this year. Evidence indicated that Japan-based Taiwanese and Japanese gangsters had been helping the suspects, the police said. The investigation continues.
■POLITICS
Lee to visit Okinawa
Former president Lee Teng-hui (李登輝) will visit Okinawa next month on an itinerary that will include a speech at Okinawa University, Japanese sources said yesterday. The trip will be Lee’s first to Okinawa and his fourth to Japan since 2000, when he left office. The sources said Lee would arrive in Okinawa on Sept. 22 and would hold a news conference to explain the objectives of his trip. He also plans to visit several World War II memorials and sites the same day. At the invitation of Okinawa University’s alumni association, Lee will deliver a speech on Japanese culture on the second day of his trip. On the following day he will do more sightseeing and is scheduled to return to Taiwan on Sept. 25, the sources said.
■HEALTH
Dengue cases reach 20
Another case of indigenous dengue fever has been confirmed, bringing the number of confirmed cases in the capital city to 20, the Taipei City Department of Health reported yesterday. The latest case involved a 47-year-old woman from Shilin District (士林). Following the confirmation of five indigenous cases in Shilin District recently, the city government dispatched mosquito eradication units to spray indoor and outdoor areas within 200m of buildings where dengue fever cases were reported, and to spray 10 boroughs near the Shilin area. In Songshan District (松山), blood samples of 215 residents have been collected for testing. Of the total, 211 samples were confirmed as negative, while four were inconclusive, the department said. Department officials urged residents in Taipei City to step up efforts to clean up surrounding areas and get rid of standing water in containers and discarded tires.
■ENVIRONMENT
Kitchen scraps collected
The Environmental Protection Administration (EPA) said on Wednesday that nearly 1,814 tonnes of kitchen leftovers were picked up daily around the country in the first half of the year. EPA officials said that in the first six months, the average daily kitchen leftovers collected reached 1,760 tonnes. Compost scraps accounted for 24 percent, or 408 tonnes per day. The government will be able to shelve plans to construct two more garbage incinerators, said officials. In addition, the government will continue to help local governments promote the collection of kitchen leftovers, the officials said. They touted the merits of recycled kitchen leftovers, pointing out that in addition to serving as animal feed, it can also be turned into organic compost to enrich the soil.
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