■ CRIME
Insurance scammer caught
A man was turned over for prosecution yesterday after hiring two men to chop off his hand so that he could claim insurance worth NT$24 million (US$730,000). The man surnamed Chiang, 38, told police on Nov. 8 that he had been attacked by two men who chopped off his left hand in Jhonghe (中和). Police became suspicious because the wound on Chiang’s arm was smooth and blood stains were concentrated in one area on the ground. An investigation showed that Chiang was in debt and had bought insurance policies worth NT$24 million from a dozen companies. Last week, police arrested two men who claimed that Chiang had hired them to knock him unconscious and chop off his left hand. A farmer found Chiang’s severed hand on Friday and handed it to police. Chiang turned himself in late on Friday and said that after his company ran into debt, he hired the two men to cut his hand to collect insurance policies to pay off debts.
■ CULTURE
Gulin book fair opens
The Ninth Gulin Street Mart & Books Fair opened yesterday on Gulin Street in Taipei City, featuring discounted new and second-hand books, as well as vendors with creative products. Gulin Street is known for its second-hand and independent bookstores. Sixty bookstores and publishing houses, including 16 independent bookstores such as Tang Shan Bookstore and Homeward Publishing, set up booths at the fair to offer discounted books and hold small exhibitions promoting reading. The fair runs from 10am through 5pm today. It also features vendors selling creative products including hand-made jewelry, hand-dyed clothing and organic food. Addressing the fair yesterday, Taipei Mayor Hau Lung-bin (郝龍斌) thanked the local community for revitalizing the area by initiating the fair nine years ago.
■ SCIENCE
System monitors river levels
The National Science Council has launched a monitoring system that provides information on river levels during heavy rainfall, which will give the authorities a three-hour warning and facilitate disaster prevention. Council Deputy Minister Chen Cheng-hong (陳正宏) said the council was coordinating with the Central Weather Bureau and the Water Resources Agency in integrating information and equipment to monitor rainfall and river levels. After three years, a platform providing information on upstream and downstream river-level fluctuations and for various scenarios in the Tamsui River has been set up.
■ SOCIETY
No babies ‘tragic’: Yaung
The lowest birthrate in the world and a rapidly aging society could engender a series of problems in Taiwan, Department of Health Minister Yaung Chih-liang (楊志良) said yesterday. In a population of 23 million, just 1.07 children are born per woman in Taiwan, even lower than Japan’s 1.57, Yaung said. “This is a tragic society,” Yaung said. “There is no war or other major disasters in Taiwan, but the birthrate is plummeting … It’s unseen in other countries.” “Many people choose to have a pet over having children,” Yaung said, adding that a growing number of baby shops have been going out of business in recent years while pet stores are mushrooming. The government has been offering various incentives in an unsuccessful bid to boost fertility rates amid growing concerns that a severe labor shortage will trigger more social and economic woes. Health authorities have said the declining birth rate is because many women are choosing to marry at a later age or stay single.
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