■CRIME
Chinese arrested at airport
Three young Chinese women attempting to transit through Taiwan to the US using fake Taiwanese passports were arrested at Taiwan Taoyuan International Airport on Saturday, the National Immigration Agency (NIA) said yesterday. The three women were discovered at an airport gate using bogus passports and fake boarding passes carrying counterfeit departure stamps, the agency said. After a preliminary investigation, airport police discovered that the three had arrived from Hong Kong with travel documents indicating they were transiting to Palau on holiday. Police found the three had canceled their airplane tickets for Palau immediately upon landing and were given the fake passports and travel documents for flights destined to the US by intermediaries. Believing that the Chinese women were being helped by a “snake head” human trafficking ring, NIA officials referred them to the Taoyuan District Prosecutors’ Office for further investigation.
■CHARITY
Ma praises worshipers
President Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九) yesterday praised Taiwanese for showing their thanks to those who had helped them in their time of need. Ma traveled to Jhushan Township (竹山), Nantou County, and visited the Zinan Temple, a Taoist shrine famous for loaning cash to followers in need. The manager of the temple told Ma that more than 430,000 people borrowed a total of NT$250 million (US$7.42 million) from the land god worshiped at the temple last year, enabling them to ride out their financial difficulties. The borrowers had repaid NT$300 million to the temple. After being repaid with interest, temple authorities then used the extra money to bolster charity and public interest drives, including giving out scholarships and subsidies to youths from low-income families, financially supporting carers for the elderly and other social programs.
■ANIMAL WELFARE
Pet owners offered subsidies
Kaohsiung City Government will offer subsidies to 1,000 residents of the city to neuter their dogs and cats this year, the city government said yesterday. Any resident older than 15 can apply for the stipends starting from today for as many as three pets, the Kaohsiung Municipal Institute for Animal Health said in a press release. The subsidy for a female cat or dog is NT$1,000, while that for a male cat or dog is NT$500, the institute said. Applications will close on Nov. 30, the institute said. Liu Hsin-cheng (劉馨正), director-general of the city’s Economic Development Bureau, which supervises the institute, said the city government was continuing to offer the stipends in a bid to reduce the number of unwanted pet pregnancies and the numbers of strays.
■ANIMAL WELFARE
Zoo to be renovated
Shoushan Zoo — the biggest public zoo in the south — will be closed for renovations for several months starting today, the Kaohsiung City Government said yesterday. The renovations at the 30-year-old zoo are expected to take up to nine months and cost as much as NT$150 million (US$4.4 million) Scenic Area Administration of Kaohsiung City Director-General Lin Kun-shan (林崑山) said. Lin said the renovations — the most comprehensive since the zoo was established in 1978 — were taking place because there was a significant difference between the living environment of the zoo’s animals and their original habitats. Lin dismissed media speculation that the zoo was preparing to accept two white tigers offered by a Chinese zoo.
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