■ CRIME
Stowaways repatriated
Ninety-four illegal Chinese migrants were repatriated yesterday to reunite with their families ahead of tomorrow’s Dragon Boat Festival with the help of the Red Cross societies of Taiwan and China. As part of a detainee swap, Chinese police also returned seven Taiwanese criminals arrested in China to Taiwanese authorities. The 94 stowaways will face judicial investigations in China, officials said. The Central News Agency reported that the boat carrying the stowaways, which set sail from Fuao Wharf in Nangan, Matsu, at 10:30am yesterday, had safely arrived in Mawei harbor in Fuzhou, Fujian Province, later yesterday.
■ SOCIETY
Amis hold rain ritual
The Amis Tribe of Chenggong Township (成?, Taitung County, yesterday held a ceremony to pray for rain, a traditional ritual that hasn’t been performed for the past 50 years. About 150 Amis, led by their leader, participated in the ceremony on the beach of Bal Wong Wong, with leaders from neighboring tribes in attendance to learn more about reviving their own tradition. As many of the younger members of the tribe have left the region, middle-aged men performed the ritual traditionally done by the young of carrying water and of catching an imaginary bird at the beginning of the ceremony. After the ritual, the men were welcomed by women carrying leaves of the Alpinia speciosa. Together, they sang and prayed for rain.
■ TOURISM
Chinese tourists 'satisfied'
Chinese tourists are generally satisfied with their sightseeing trips to Taiwan, but a majority are unhappy with the traffic in Taipei, a survey released on Monday showed. Taipei City Councilor Dai Hsi-chin (戴錫欽) told a council meeting that he had conducted the survey with the help of various travel agencies and had collected 490 valid responses. The survey showed that 65 percent of respondents were satisfied with their hotel rooms and services, and 64 percent enjoyed the food in Taiwan. However, 86 percent said they were dissatisfied with the traffic in Taipei, especially the lack of parking spaces for buses near the city’s tourist attractions. The survey also found that the Chinese tourists stayed for an average of 1.5 days in Taipei and spent an average of 14,668 yuan (NT$70,166) in the city. Lin Li-yu (林麗玉), deputy director of Taipei City’s Department of Transportation, said the department had been working with businesses and concerned authorities to solve the parking problems around the city’s tourist spots.
■ CRIME
Illegal pesticides seized
Law enforcement officers raided 18 locations around the country on Monday and seized nearly 100 tonnes of semi-finished illegal pesticides and precursors, the Taoyuan office of the Investigation Bureau said in a statement. Taoyuan office investigators, along with officials from the Bureau of Animal and Plant Health and prosecutors from various district courts, stormed 18 locations in Taipei, Kaohsiung and Yunlin, Tainan and Kaohsiung counties. They arrested a chief suspect, identified by the surname Wang, and his seven accomplices. Investigators in Taoyuan found that the group began to import the illegal pesticides and its precursor last year, passing them off through customs as “chemical products.” They said the investigation was continuing, as they suspected that a few well-known domestic pesticide companies might have assisted in the marketing of the illegal products.
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