■CRIME
Chen to appear in court
Former president Chen Shui-bian (陳水扁) will appear in court today for a three-day preliminary hearing on corruption charges that he insists are politically motivated, a court official said. Chen, who is being detained at Taipei Detention Center in Tucheng (土城), Taipei County, is scheduled to appear at the Taipei District Court at 9:30am, the official said yesterday. Three other accused — two businessmen and a former science park chief — will also appear. Chen’s defense lawyer Cheng Wen-lung (鄭文龍) told reporters yesterday that “not only is presiding judge Tsai Shou-hsun [蔡守訓] biased, but so are most local news media. So the chances of winning the case in the district court are not high.”
■CULTURE
Festival dates announced
This year’s Pingsi International Lantern Festival will open on Jan. 26 and feature concerts, dance performances and sky lantern displays. Three main sky lantern celebrations will be held during the 15-day festival. A small-scale event will be held at Chingtung Elementary School on Jan. 31 and larger-scale extravaganzas will be held at Pingsi Junior High School on Feb. 7 and at “Sky Lantern Square” in Pingsi Township (平溪) on Feb. 9, the traditional Lantern Festival where people send their lanterns into the sky and make wishes for the New Year. The Lantern Festival falls 15 days after the Lunar New Year. During the 15-day festival, a total of 10,000 ox-shaped sky lanterns, in celebration of the Year of the Ox, will be given away to help festival visitors send their New Year’s wishes to the gods, the county’s Tourism Bureau said.
■EDUCATION
NCCU to launch stipend
National Chengchi University (NCCU) yesterday launched a stipend to prevent its students from dropping out of school as a result of the recent economic downturn. The plan, dubbed the “Dawning Project,” includes NT$3.5 million (US$100,000) for students whose families suffer during the recession, NCCU’s dean of student affairs Lin Yeh-yun (林月雲) said. The project consists of three categories — offering students requiring emergency financial help, providing part-time job opportunities on campus and affordable dormitories, Lin said. Any students whose parents are laid off or on unpaid leave could apply for a monthly subsidy of between NT$8,000 and NT$16,000 so that the students would be able to cover their basic living expenses, she said. Those who were unable to afford their tuition fees could also apply for a stipend ranging between NT$10,000 and NT$50,000, she said. Meanwhile, the Chung Yuan Christian University has also decided to exempt students whose parents have recently been laid off from tuition fees for the spring semester. The school planned to set up a NT$5 million fund to cover the costs, it said.
■CRIME
Illegal immigrants up
Coastal patrols captured 396 illegal would-be immigrants trying to enter the country last year, 15 percent more than in 2007, Coast Guard Administration (CGA) figures showed. CGA Minister Wang Ginn-wang (王進旺) said the number of those from Vietnam grew at a faster pace than other nationalities. CGA agents also seized 107 firearms and 1,387 bullets last year, increases of 91 percent and 48 percent from 2007, he said. Wang said that 11.37kg of first-grade drugs, 232.11kg of second-grade drugs and 343kg of third-grade narcotics were also seized over the past year, slightly less than 2007. He attributed the decrease to a shortage of illicit drugs on the international market.
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