■ CRIME
Chen assailant jailed
A man has been jailed for two months for kicking former president Chen Shui-bian (陳水扁) in the rear, a court official said yesterday. Su An-sheng (蘇安生), 65 year-old member of the pro-unification Patriot Association (愛國同心會), was also convicted of assaulting Taiwan’s former envoy to Japan, Koh Se-kai (許世楷), for which he received a separate 30-day jail term. Su can pay a fine of NT$90,000 in place of the jail term. Su has refused to apologize for the incident in July, saying he wanted to “teach the corrupt Chen a lesson.” It happened as Chen was walking into a courtroom to face a defamation case brought by five retired military officers over claims they took kickbacks on a French frigates deal. A Taipei court in September cleared Chen of defamation.
■CULTURE
Museum embraces holiday
Christmas decorations have been put up at the National Palace Museum in suburban Taipei this year for the first time in its history. Huang Yung-tai (黃永泰), deputy director of the museum, said on Monday that the museum hopes to promote the Christmas spirit of “sharing” and attract more visitors to one of Taiwan’s premier tourist attractions. Among additional attractions are Saturday performances, launched last month, that feature drummers, bands, dancers and jazz musicians. Visitors to the museum on Saturdays between 5pm and 8:30pm will also enjoy free entry, Ho said. A variety of different itineraries to suit the particular needs of young people, couples and families have also been organized, she said.
■TRANSPORTATION
MRT schedule changed
Taipei City’s Muzha Line will operate on Saturday and Sunday morning until 9am to accommodate participants in the civil service examination and a marathon event over the weekend. The Taipei City Government began to suspend weekend services of the line on Dec. 6 to allow for testing of the integration of the Muzha Line and the Neihu Line so the Neihu Line can open as scheduled in June. The operation, however, will resume from 6am to 9am on Saturday to accommodate more than 40,000 people who will participate in the civil service examination, the city government said yesterday. The operation will resume from 5:30am to 9am on Sunday to accommodate participants in the exam on Sunday, as well as participants in the 2009 ING Taipei Marathon on the same day.
■CRIME
Former prosecutor dies
Former Taipei prosecutor Ko Chin-chu (柯金柱) died yesterday shortly after the Taipei District Court sentenced him to 20 years in prison. The court found Ko, 60, guilty of taking bribes totaling NT$6.2 million (US$204,620) in 2002 and 2003 while investigating two criminal cases, and released him from detention on NT$500,000 bail. Ko was rushed to Taipei City Hoping Hospital yesterday after he passed out while waiting in the court’s detention room for release. He died after emergency treatment failed to resuscitate him. Ko was also involved in two other corruption scandals, and the cases are still being processed by the Supreme Court and the Taiwan High Court. Ko’s friend, Lu Ching-nan (盧慶南), a lawyer who was accused of cooperating with Ko to solicit NT$5.5 million in 2002 from Hong-En Hospital and another NT$700,000 from Chung Hua Hospital in 2003, was sentenced to 15 years in prison. The other three defendants in the case were found not guilty.
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
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
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