■ POLITICS
Zhang ‘pusher’ sentenced
Tainan District Court yesterday sentenced Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) Tainan City Councilor Wang Ting-yu (王定宇) to four months in prison for assaulting Association for Relations Across the Taiwan Strait (ARATS) Vice Chairman Zhang Mingqing (張銘清) last October. Wang was convicted of inciting supporters to use violence against Zhang during the Chinese official’s visit to Taiwan. He was charged with intimidation and assault, with prosecutors suggesting a 14-month jail sentence. Six other defendants were also convicted of assault and given prison or detention sentences of less than four months. Wang insists he is innocent because protesting is a democratic right, and a videotape of the incident showed he did not come into direct contact with Zhang. The prison term is convertable to a fine.
■ CRIME
MOJ seeks Sun’s money
The Ministry of Justice’s Administrative Enforcement Agency is seeking payment from Jack Sun (孫道存), the former chairman of Pacific Electric Wire and Cable, who owes an estimated NT$300 million (US$10 million) in taxes. Sun’s extravagant lifestyle was in the spotlight recently when he married a woman much young than himself and showered her with expensive gifts. Sun paid NT$100 million of the debt yesterday with money he borrowed from a bank, and named his daughter Amy Sun (孫芸芸) as a guarantor. However, the agency said much of Amy Sun’s assets have already been mortgaged, so she was ineligible to serve as a guarantor. The agency has demanded that Jack Sun pay the remaining NT$200 million within the next six months.
■ CRIME
Lovelorn attacker nabbed
A 22-year-old Taiwanese man who allegedly stabbed a nurse during a bungled robbery last week has been arrested after returning to the scene of the crime to profess his love for her, Miaoli City police said yesterday. The man stabbed the 18-year-old once in the back but decided against robbing her when she begged him not to take her belongings. He then escorted her to hospital. “When I noticed how lovely you look, I changed my mind … I hope I have a chance to apologize to you and compensate you. Please contact me,” he wrote in a love note, police said. After leaving the message on the nurse’s motorbike, he waited for the victim to return. She did, accompanied by police officers, who promptly arrested him.
■ SOCIETY
Military relief work a boon
The armed forces may earn greater public respect by engaging in disaster relief operations, C.V. Chen (陳長文), president of the Red Cross Society of the Republic of China, said on Sunday. Chen said the huge budget to buy weaponry such as US-made Apache attack helicopters was a waste. “Valuable financial resources should not be used to acquire weapons we would seldom use. The funds would be better spent on social services, education, medical care and the judiciary.” he said. It was not unusual to deploy the military for rescue work, Chen said, citing Japan sending its troops to help with the rescue and relief operations after the 1996 Kobe earthquake. “Taiwan may not necessarily face wars in the future, but it is sure to encounter other disasters, and the armed forces will have opportunities to put their rescue and relief skills to use.” Chen said. The goal of the military is to protect the public and their property, and by joining disaster relief operations, the military can achieve its purpose and earn public respect, he said.
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
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
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