CRIME
Man fights off kidnappers
A Taiwanese man was shot and wounded as he fought off kidnappers in the southern Philippines, days after gunmen freed another trader when their getaway car ran out of gasoline, police said yesterday. Jung Yeh-lai, 30, was recuperating in a hospital in Zamboanga City under police guard after he was wounded by one of three gunmen who posed as customers, then tried to drag him outside the office of his import-export business on Saturday, police regional director Edwin Corvera said. The attackers fled in a waiting speedboat, he said. The kidnapping attempt came just days after another victim in Zamboanga was abandoned by his abductors who were being chased by police, Senior Superintendent Cedric Train said.
ROBOTICS
Taiwan takes nine medals
Competing against top contestants from around the world, teams from Taiwan won nine medals in various competition categories at this year’s World Robot Olympiad (WRO), which ended in Manila on Sunday. The WRO is an event where science, technology and education bring together young people from all over the globe to apply their creativity and problem-solving skills in educational robot competitions. The contest, first held in Singapore in 2004, is conducted among three different age groups: elementary, junior and senior. Up against 1,200 students from 22 countries, the 80 members of 24 Taiwanese teams, representing various private and public schools, took home one silver medal in the open category for senior-high school students and one bronze in the elementary open category. The award for Most Popular Robot in the junior-high category also went to Taiwan.
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
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
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