■TRANSPORTATION
EasyCards support tennis
The Taipei EasyCard Corp yesterday celebrated the issue of 20 million EasyCards by presenting 300 sets of a special edition EasyCard featuring tennis player Lu Yen-hsun (盧彥勳) for a charity sale. The company began issuing EasyCards in 2002, and expanded its usage from just a MRT and bus fare card to an electronic wallet in April. Taipei Mayor Hau Lung-bin (郝龍斌) and other guests at the celebration hosted an auction of five sets of the special-edition EasyCard, raising NT$1.01 million (US$31,800). That money, along with the proceeds of the 300 sets, will be given to Lu to fund his training. Lu made an appearance via video to thank his supporters. Last month he became the first Taiwanese to make it to the fourth round of the singles at Wimbledon. The special EasyCard costs NT$1,000. Details are available at www.rendylu.url.tw.
■POLITICS
Kaohsiung concert planned
A Chinese music concert will be held at the Kaohsiung National Stadium as one of the 10 activities celebrating the Republic of China’s centennial next year, Vice President Vincent Siew (蕭萬長) said yesterday. Siew, who chairs the Centenary Celebration Preparation Committee, said Chinese artists from all over the world will participate in the Nov. 12 concert. Committee members met at the Weiwuying Center for the Arts Preparation Office in Kaohsiung to exchange ideas with local artists and tourism groups about the celebration. Siew said it was time to transform the greater Kaohsiung region into an arts and culture area. The Weiwuying center, which was used by the military prior to the 1980s, will serve as a hub to integrate artistic resources in southern Taiwan, he said.
■CRIME
KMT ex-legislator indicted
Former KMT legislator Kwan Yuk-noan (關沃暖) was indicted on a corruption charge yesterday, accused of embezzling payments for legislative aides. Prosecutors requested a sentence of 12 years in prison, saying that Kwan has not shown remose for what he had done. Kwan served as a legislator-at-large representing overseas compatriots from 1998 to 2004. Taipei prosecutors said Kwan allegedly asked his former legislative aide Cheng Fang-kuo (鄭方國) to collect seven people’s names for him and claimed a total of NT$5,687,551 in payments for legislative aides. Kwan yesterday said he was innocent, adding that such activity was common practice in the legislature. Former KMT legislator Wu Cherng-dean (吳成典) was indicted by the Kinmen Prosecutors Office in 2008 on similar charges. His case is pending in the Kinmen District Court.
■CRIME
Mislabeled clothing seized
About 14,000 garments carrying “Made in Taiwan” labels that were actually made in China were confiscated during a raid on a Chiayi City warehouse on Thursday. Acting on a tip-off, female investigators from the Chiayi City branch of the Bureau of Investigation posed as customers of a hair salon and discovered the salon was selling Chinese-made clothing with the MIT label, deputy division chief Chang You-jen (張尤仁) said. Chang said police believe the husband of the salon owner, surnamed Chen (陳), was the mastermind of the operation. Chen is suspected of importing low-cost Chinese apparel and having workers replace the “Made in China” labels with “Made in Taiwan” ones before selling the clothing under the “Wuge” brand. The clothes cost between NT$100 and NT$200 per item, but sold for twice to three times to distributors around the country, Chang 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