■ CRIME
Newspaper thief sentenced
A court yesterday handed down a six-month prison sentence to a man who was arrested for stealing newspapers from a convenience store by a police officer guarding then-premier Liu Chao-shiuan (劉兆玄). The man, surnamed Shih (石), was at a convenience store in August at the same time as a police officer was guiding the former premier to his car. Shih was caught after taking three newspapers and proceeding to exit the store without paying. The officer arrested Shih on the spot. Shih initially said he bought the papers elsewhere, but surveillance footage rebutted his claim. Shih had prior records of stealing scooters and stereo equipment. The Taipei District Court said Shih may pay a fine in lieu of the sentence at the rate of NT$1,000 per day.
■ CULTURE
Film festival returns
More than 500 movie industry players in the Asia-Pacific region gathered in Kaohsiung County yesterday for the opening of the Asia-Pacific Film Festival. The decades-old festival was ended two years ago as a result of the global financial crisis. It opened again yesterday with the 500 delegates from 17 countries and regions attending festivities at I-Shou University. As a founding member, eight-time sponsor of the event and long-time host of its secretariat, Taiwan felt obliged to revive the festival, said legislator Justin Chou (周守訓), chairman of the event. Films from Taiwan, Japan, Hong Kong, Singapore, South Korea, Iran, Indonesia, Thailand, Malaysia, the Philippines, Vietnam, India and Australia will be shown at theaters at the E-Da World recreational park near I-Shou University. The festival continues over the weekend, with the awards ceremony to be held at I-Shou University’s stadium on Saturday evening.
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