■DEFENSE
Ma consoles Ting family
President Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九) traveled to Hualien yesterday to pay his respects to fighter pilot Major Ting Shih-pao (丁世寶), who disappeared during a routine training flight in waters off the coast of the eastern county in early March. Ting’s body and the F-16A Fighting Falcon jet he was flying were never recovered despite an extensive search by the Coast Guard and the Ministry of National Defense, which dispatched several helicopters, aircraft, patrol ships and naval vessels to comb the area for days. Ma consoled Ting’s family members and presented a medal of honor for the lost pilot. Ma also promoted Ting to the rank of lieutenant colonel posthumously. Officials believe that the 34-year-old Ting, who had a total of more than 1,200 hours of flight time, lost his bearings during the training flight and crashed into the sea.
■CRIME
Police hunt for naked rider
Tainan police were looking for a man who rode his motorbike naked through the city’s main streets for one hour on Monday, local TV reports said yesterday. The man, aged between 30 and 40, wore only a helmet as he drove around in a light drizzle caused by Typhoon Jangmi, local cable TV stations TVBS and ETTV reported. Although most people stayed home because of the typhoon, many still saw the naked motorist and took photos with their phone cameras, the TV reports said, broadcasting a video clip that showed the man riding a motorbike and sometimes honking his horn. Police suspect the man is an exhibitionist and plan to charge him with public indecency, the TV reports said.
■CRIME
MOFA warns on Somalia
The Ministry of Foreign Affairs yesterday cautioned Taiwanese fishermen to stay away from the waters around Somalia after an Ukranian boat was seized by pirates in the region recently. The ministry said that despite the high security risk, many Taiwanese fishermen were attracted to Somalia and its surrounding region because of its fertile tuna hunting ground. A Taiwanese vessel was hijacked by Somalian pirates in November and was held for six months, ending with the payment of a high ransom. One Taiwanese crew member was killed during the ordeal.
■CRIME
Former envoy charged
The Control Yuan yesterday charged George Liu (劉寬平), the nation’s former representative to Switzerland, with dereliction of duty for delaying the delivery of a letter on an alleged money-laundering case involving the former first family. Control Yuan member Chao Jung-yao (趙榮耀) said that Liu’s office held the letter, in which the Federal Department of Justice and Police of the Swiss Confederation requested assistance from Taiwan in July to check the bank accounts of the son and daughter-in-law of former president Chen Shu-bian (陳水扁), for more than one week before sending it to Taipei via ordinary mail rather than sending an urgent telegram. The Swiss authorities were alerted by Merrill Lynch Bank (Suisse) earlier this year when the bank suspected Chen Chih-chung (陳致中) and his wife Huang Jui-ching (黃睿靚) of money laundering. “Liu had served as a legislator for three years before taking up the position in Switzerland ... He should have been very sensitive in this case,” Chao said. “His handlings were very inappropriate as it was not about the former president, but also the reputation of the Republic of China.”
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