■ LEGAL
Muslims accept settlement
Three Indonesian employees of a sports fashion company in Taipei County who were allegedly forced to eat pork accepted a cash settlement from their former employer and withdrew their civil lawsuit on Friday. Shin Hua Fashion Co’s owner, surnamed Chang (張), who was indicted in May, paid NT$150,000 to each of the three Muslim women after negotiations between the two sides’ lawyers. Banciao prosecutors have recommended an eight-month prison sentence for Chang for allegedly forcing the three to eat pork, which is prohibited in Islam. After Friday’s settlement, Chang said she hoped that prosecutors would cancel their recommendation. The criminal case is still ongoing. At a hearing at the Banciao Prosecutors’ Office last month, Chang said she did not force the three to eat pork or reduce their wages because they refused to eat pork, though she admitted to issuing a verbal threat that their wages could be reduced if they refused.
■ INDUSTRY
Wu praises electric car
Premier Wu Den-yih (吳敦義) yesterday praised a local business group that develops and produces “made in Taiwan” electric automobiles after the company’s new vehicle passed all the safety checks required. “It is an important milestone in the development of locally designed electric automobiles,” Wu said while visiting Yulon Group’s automobile manufacturing base in Taipei County. Luxgen Motor Co, a subsidiary of the group, unveiled its fully electric seven-passenger MPV earlier this year, making it Taiwan’s first locally made electric car with an intelligent operating system. After riding in the car, which has been certified as producing no carbon dioxide emissions, the premier said he was impressed by the smoothness and steadiness of the vehicle.
■ DIPLOMACY
Sokolow awarded medal
The Ministry of Foreign Affairs earlier this week presented a Friend of Foreign Service Medal to Alan Sokolow, a former director of the Council of State Governments’ Eastern Regional Conference, for his contribution to enhancing the friendship between Taiwan and the US during his tenure. Andrew Kao (高振群), director of the Taipei Economic and Cultural Office in New York, conferred the medal on behalf of Minister of Foreign Affairs Timothy Yang (楊進添). The award ceremony took place in New York with a number of US dignitaries in attendance, including New York State Senator Ruth Hassell-Thompson and Wendell Hannaford, incumbent director of the Council on State Governments’ Eastern Regional Conference. Speaking at the ceremony, Kao mentioned the help that Sokolow extended to Taiwan’s representative offices in New York and Boston in promoting exchanges and cooperation between Taiwan and 10 states in the eastern US.
■ RETAILING
Drug stores hold summit
A summit on the operational strategy of pharmacies in Asia will open tomorrow in Kaohsiung to promote cooperation among the region’s pharmaceutical retailers. During the two-day summit, Taiwan’s Chinese Stores Development Association (CSDA) — will forge ties with the Japan Association of Chain Drug Stores (JACDS) to push for further exchanges between drugstores in Taiwan and Japan, the organizers said. In addition to JACDS, the China Association of Chain Drug Stores will also attend the event. Representatives from industry and academia will also attend the summit to present their views.
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