■ TRADE
Nebraska delegation arrives
An 11-person delegation from Nebraska led by the director of the US state’s Agriculture Department, Greg Ibach, arrived in Taiwan on Friday night. The delegation’s 10-day trade mission, which will be in Taiwan until Aug. 11, will also make a stop in Hong Kong. Nebraska Governor Dave Heineman marked the 28th anniversary of the state’s trade relationship with Taiwan on Wednesday, according to a Nebraskan newspaper. “For almost three decades, Nebraskans have benefited from a positive relationship with the Taiwanese that has provided opportunities for trade, as well as educational and cultural exchanges,” Heineman was quoted as saying by the paper. The report said the delegation, consisting of government officials and representatives from the agriculture and livestock sectors, will host meat promotion events at Taipei hotels and meet with people from the private and political sectors.
■ CRIME
Student cashed fake checks
A Lithuanian student studying in Taiwan was arrested on Wednesday by the Criminal Investigation Bureau (CIB) for cashing counterfeit traveler’s checks. The 30-year-old graduate student cashed two 500-euro American Express traveler’s checks for NT$46,000 (US$1,484) in January in Tainan. The checks were identified as counterfeit by American Express Bank in Sydney in May, police said. The student claimed he did not know the checks were counterfeit. He said he received the checks after he applied for an online job and was recruited last November as a survey agent for the “Mystery Customer Evaluation Team.” He was promised a 10 percent commission for each successfully passed check, he said. However, according to the CIB, he was told to wire the money to an account in Port-au-Prince, Haiti, but knowing that the checks were fake, decided to keep the cash.
■ TRANSPORTATION
Air Force receives fine
Taiwan’s Air Force was ordered to pay a record NT$537 million (US$16.78 million) to an airline for causing damage to its passenger plane, a court official said on Friday. TransAsia Airways, a small local carrier, sued the Air Force for failing to clear the runway after its Airbus hit a construction vehicle while landing in 2003 at Tainan Airport, a military-managed air field in southern Taiwan. All 175 passengers and crew aboard the plane were unhurt, although three people in the vehicle were injured. The airline said it was forced to retire the plane because of the damage caused by the collision.
■ SPORT
Swimming competition held
An annual long-distance swimming competition was held at Liaolou Bay in Kinmen yesterday with more than 1,700 swimmers participating, the highest number in the event’s eight-year history. A total of 1,772 swimmers, comprising 85 teams, with 71 from Taiwan, 12 from China, one from Hong Kong and, for the first time ever, one from Macau, took part in the 3km swim held by the Kinmen County Government. Chang Kin-nan (張金男) and Chang Huang Hsiu-jong (張黃秀榮), a couple from Hsinchu with a combined age of 130, swam in the race for the fifth time this year. Yesterday’s event is followed by another big swim to be held today — between Taiwan-held Kinmen and the Chinese city of Xiamen. Swimmers are scheduled to set out from Shuangkou on the island of Little Kinmen (小金門) and swim 7km to Yefengzhai in Xiamen on the coast of China.
AGENCIES
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