The Sports Affairs Council (SAC) said yesterday it accepted the Ministry of Justice’s proposal to assign prosecutor offices in Shilin (士林), Taichung, Tainan and Kaohsiung as contacts for professional baseball teams in a bid to prevent gangsters from influencing games.
The Shilin office will work with the Brother Elephants’ management, while the Sinon Bulls, President Lions and LaNew Bears would be under the jurisdiction of the Taichung, Tainan and Kaohsiung offices respectively.
The assignments were based on the team’s home towns.
PHOTO: CHIEN JUNG-FONG, TAIPEI TIMES
The decision was one of the conclusions reached at a meeting yesterday morning between council officials and representatives from the ministry, the National Police Administration and three teams to discuss ways of preventing players and other team members from engaging in underground gambling.
The La New Bears did not send anyone to the meeting, which was presided over by Sports Affairs Council Minister Tai Hsia-ling (戴遐齡).
The council held similar meetings before the season and mid-season.
Tai said she hoped the prosecutors would inform teams “in advance” whenever they detect something wrong with their players. Her suggestion, however, was opposed by justice ministry representative Yen Da-ho (顏大和), who is chief prosecutor of the Taiwan High Prosecutors Office.
“There is no such thing as informing the teams in advance once an investigation is launched. A prosecutor would break the law by doing so,” Yen said.
Deputy Council Minister Chen Hsien-chung (陳顯宗) said the council hoped that the assignment of prosecutors would improve communication between team management and prosecutors offices on issues such as protecting players and sharing information.
Four other conclusions were reached at the meeting: Each prosecutor office will also provide “legal education” to its players; the team must reinforce management of players, with managers traveling with the teams during the season; teams can request police protection and teams should have regular communication with the players’ union on salaries and retirement plans, Chen said.
The National Police Agency should also continue its efforts to clamp down on gambling on baseball games.
“We also hope that investigators will quickly settle the case,” Chen said.
Meanwhile, Elephants pitcher Tsao Chin-hui (曹錦輝), one of the players allegedly involved in fixing games, issued a statement to his fans saying that he never intended to disappoint them and apologizing for befriending “the wrong person” and being careless about his duty as a professional athlete.
“Please do not disregard the efforts I have made,” Tsao said. “I have learned my lesson the hard way.”
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