■ CRIME
Fake bags prove costly
The Intellectual Property Court ruled that a woman must pay Hermes International SCA NT$256 million (US$7.5 million) for selling four fake Hermes handbags, local media reported yesterday. The amount is the highest compensation sought by the court in a violation of intellectual property rights, reports said. The court made the ruling recently after the Paris-based luxury goods manufacturer sued the woman, surnamed Lee, 41. The sum reflects the maximum fine for violating intellectual property rights — 500 times the value of the goods sold. Lee, a former sales clerk for Hermes Taiwan, bought four fake Hermes’ Birkin handbags and sold them through two second-hand shops in Taiwan, splitting the profits with the shop owners, media reports said.
■ TOURISM
Taichung travel fair opens
The 2009 Taichung International Travel Fair opened at the Taichung World Trade Center yesterday with a wide variety of discount travel packages on offer. This year’s fair is the largest ever, with 300 exhibitors and an additional 50 booths outside. Local and foreign tourism bureaus, airline companies, travel agencies, hotels, holiday resorts, theme parks, cruise liners and city and county governments are all exhibiting. Vistors found plenty of deals to choose from. Among them: a three-day trip to Hong Kong for NT$5,988 and a six-day excursion to Australia’s Gold Coast for NT$19,800. The fair runs through Monday.
■ AGRICULTURE
Orange demand plummets
Farmers in Taitung County are concerned about plummeting demand for their oranges, the local farmers’ association said yesterday. Association officials said orders for tangerines and Valencia oranges have fallen by some 70 percent. Taitung farmers had a bumper crop of Valencia oranges this spring but half the fruit remains unharvested and prices have fallen to NT$100 for 3.5kg, said Donghe farmers’ association officials.
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