■ CRIME
Kuo Yao-chi aquitted, again
Former minister of transportation and communications Kuo Yao-chi (郭瑤琪) was found not guilty of corruption yesterday by the Taiwan High Court. Kuo was acquitted both on her first and second hearings, but prosecutors yesterday said they would appeal the verdict to the Supreme Court. Kuo was indicted in September 2007 for allegedly accepting US$20,000 from the Nan Ren Hu Group, which owns stakes in resorts, aquariums and freeway rest areas nationwide, in return for awarding a tender for renovations at the Taipei Railway Station to the company. Yesterday’s ruling said Nan Ren Hu never placed a bid for the railway station project, so it could not prove that Kuo received the money in return for giving the company the project.
■ MEDIA
No compensation for ETTV-S
The High Court yesterday ruled the National Communications Commission (NCC) will not have to compensate ETTV-S NT$348 million (US$10.9 million) for losses incurred during the 332-day period after its license was suspended by the Government Information Office (GIO) in July 2005. The ruling yesterday overturned a ruling handed down by the Taipei District Court that ruled against the NCC in the compensation case. The cable station had its license suspended after a review committee ruled that half of its programming was not news-related. The station appealed the GIO’s decision to the Cabinet and the appeal was granted, enabling the station to resume operations in July 2006. ETTV-S then filed a request for compensation to the Taipei District Court, which in November 2008 ruled in the station’s favor.
■ HEALTH
Free test kits in Pingtung
The Pingtung County Government said yesterday it would offer hydrogen peroxide testing kits free of charge, starting today, in an effort to keep contaminated poultry from entering the market. Although no chicken or duck meat containing restricted levels of the germicide have been reported in the market in recent years, the county will continue to give out the test kits this year, it said. It said it would distribute 680 dropper bottles that can be used to measure concentration levels of hydrogen peroxide. One bottle can be used to test as many as 100 items with 99 percent accuracy. The kits can be used to determine hydrogen peroxide concentration in a wide range of food products, such as shark fins, lotus seeds, bamboo chopsticks, poultry products, noodles and meatballs, it said. Excessive levels of hydrogen peroxide can cause headaches, nausea, skin eruptions and erosion, as well as bleeding of the stomach and esophagus, it said.
■ HONG KONG
Cooperation group set up
A new council will be set up today to promote relations with Taiwan, the territory’s government said yesterday. The Hong Kong-Taiwan Economic and Cultural Cooperation and Promotion Council will be chaired by Charles Lee (李業廣), a non-official member of the Executive Council, while Financial Secretary John Tsang (曾俊華) will be the honorary chairman. A government spokesman said the council would be registered as a company within the next few months, with a counterpart organization to be set up by Taiwan. The council will discuss public policy issues and forge pacts with its Taiwanese counterpart, the spokesman said, adding that the council was expected to provide broader-based exchanges between the two sides. Possible areas of cooperation include public health and financial regulation, the spokesman 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