■DEFENSE
Two ensigns AWOL
The Navy Fleet Command Headquarters yesterday urged two ensigns who absconded to return to their posts as soon as possible. “If they have problems, they should seek solutions rather than run away,” it said in a press release. Ensign Lu Hung-hsiang (呂鴻祥), 25, and Lu Hsi-fan (盧晰璠), 27, did not return to their posts on Thursday and Friday. The Military Prosecutors’ Office listed the couple as wanted on Thursday. Local media reported that the two, who are boyfriend and girlfriend, had suffered from sea sickness since they began serving on board the Feng-jiang and Hsiang-jiang respectively in April. The Navy’s Fleet 131 said the two had filed a request to be transferred to a desk job a few weeks after beginning their posts, but their requests were rejected because they were not diagnosed by any military doctors as unfit for battleship assignment. Navy Command Headquarters said the couple’s behavior violated the Military Criminal Code (陸海空軍刑法), which could result in a maximum sentence of five years behind bars.
■SOCIETY
Domestic violence rising
The Ministry of the Interior said yesterday that 65,359 cases of domestic violence were reported in the first nine months of this year, an increase of 5,056 cases, or 8.4 percent, from the same period last year. The main reason behind the increase was that the number of cases of violence between spouses, former spouses or cohabitants rose by 2,826 compared with last year, the ministry said. Of the cases reported from January to September, 38,185, or 58.4 percent, involved violence between spouses, former spouses or cohabitants; and 12,729 cases, or 19.5 percent, concerned violence against children or teenagers. Another 1,977 cases, or 3.02 percent, involved assaults on the elderly. Among these categories, only the number of cases against children or teenagers was down from the same period last year. About 76 percent of the 61,856 domestic violence victims in the first nine months of this year were women. Female victims between 30 and 50 years of age accounted for nearly 50 percent of the total female victims, statistics showed.
■FOREIGN AID
Medics head for Thailand
The International Cooperation and Development Fund (ICDF) will dispatch a mobile medical team to Chiang Rai, the northernmost province of Thailand, tomorrow to provide local people with medical services and humanitarian care. This will be the first visit to Thailand by an ICDF mobile medical team, the fund said in a statement. The team will be made up of 10 physicians specializing in internal medicine, surgery, pediatrics, dentistry, gynecology and obstetrics, as well as a pharmacist and medical care staff, the statement said. The team will provide medical care services and conduct joint projects with a local hospital.
■CRIME
Narcotics seized at Taoyuan
About 50kg of illegal drugs were seized over the past month at Taiwan Taoyuan International Airport, a spokesman for the Taoyuan Prosecutors’ Office said yesterday. The spokesman said Taoyuan prosecutors, airport police, customs and investigation agents confiscated almost 50kg of narcotics that smugglers were attempting to bring into Taiwan in the past month. One large haul of 28kg of an illegal substance was found hidden in a compressor motor, while other smugglers concealed hauls ranging from 2kg to 8kg inside monitors and face masks, the spokesman said. Many smugglers were local youth.
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