■ CRIME
Police sergeant arrested
Taoyuan prosecutors yesterday arrested a sergeant from Taoyuan County Police Department’s criminal investigation team and summoned a military prosecutor regarding allegations of involvement in an incident in which gangsters disturbed a restaurant during a wedding banquet in December. Taoyuan prosecutors said that Sergeant Wang Yun-hui (王雲輝), 39, had a quarrel with the waiters while having dinner with a suspected gangster. Identifying himself as a police officer, Wang allegedly said he would seek revenge by doing whatever he could to hurt the restaurant’s business. A few days later, Wang Po-yuan (王柏元), 30, a member of the Celestial Way gang, led a group of 10 to the restaurant, which was hosting a wedding banquet. They began smashing furniture and managed to disrupt the dinner. Five gang members were arrested. During the investigation, prosecutors also discovered that Yang Wan-yu (楊萬郁), a military prosecutor, was at the scene when the disturbance occurred, but he did not try to stop it. Yang was summoned as a witness.
■ HEALTH
Medics visit Nicaragua
A medical team organized by Taiwan Root Medical Peace Corps is in Nicaragua offering free services to people in remote areas, diplomatic sources said yesterday. At a clinic last Thursday in Pantasma, which is a four-hour drive from the capital Managua, the team provided free ultrasonic services for pregnant women who wanted to know the gender of their babies. The 33-member team of specialist doctors, other medical personnel and volunteers then headed to Matiguas and Muy Muy in the north, where they set up other free clinics. The mission, headed by Liu Chi-chun (劉啟群), also met Nicaraguan Vice President Jaime Morales in Managua. Ambassador to Nicaragua Wu Chin-mu (吳進木) passed on the appreciation of Nicaraguan President Daniel Ortega to the team for its work. The mission in Nicaragua was scheduled to return to Taiwan yesterday after the five-day visit.
■ MILITARY
Veterans honor comrades
A group of veterans who survived a protracted Chinese artillery bombardment on Kinmen more than 50 years ago traveled to the island on Sunday to pay tribute to their fallen comrades. A total of 77 veterans, accompanied by Lu Fang-yen (呂芳煙), chairman of the 823 Artillery Bombardment Veterans and Friends Association, flew to Kinmen to attend a commemoration ceremony in honor of the soldiers who gave their lives to safeguard Taiwan against a Chinese invasion on Aug. 23, 1958. “I came to mourn my brothers in arms so that they won’t be lonely,” Lu said. “Although our military success secured peace in the Taiwan Strait for 50 years, the battle brought tragedy to many people on both sides of the Strait,” Lu said.
■ MILITARY
Air Force transfers hangar
The Air Force has handed over one of its hangars at Taipei Songshan Airport to the Civil Aeronautics Administration (CAA), which will use it to accommodate private jets as part of the country’s first business aviation area. Air Force deputy chief of staff Major General Han Geng-sheng (韓更生) told a news conference yesterday that the hangar was transferred last Wednesday “on loan,” although the transfer will eventually be permanent after related legal procedures are completed. “We absolutely support the government’s policy to set up a business aviation zone at the airport as long as it does not compromise the operation of Songshan Air Base,” Han 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