GEOLOGY
Earthquake hits Yilan
A magnitude 4.8 earthquake rattled Taiwan’s northeastern coast at 3:19pm yesterday, the Central Weather Bureau (CWB) said. No casualties were reported, according to the bureau. The hypocenter was 22km northeast of Yilan County at sea, at a depth of 92.3km, the CWB’s Seismological Center said. The tremor was felt in Taipei City. It was felt strongest as a magnitude 3 temblor in New Taipei City’s (新北市) Pinglin District (坪林), seismologists said. A quake of magnitude 2 was recorded in several other areas of of New Taipei City, Taipei City’s Xinyi District (信義), Yilan County’s Luodong Township (羅東), Taoyuan County’s Jhongli City and Miaoli County’s Shihtoushan (獅頭山) area.
LAW
Wang Dan subpoenaed
The Taiwan High Court subpoenaed on Friday former foreign minister James Huang (黃志芳) and Wang Dan (王丹), a leader of China’s democratic movement, to appear in former president Chen Shui-bian’s (陳水扁) embezzlement of state funds trial. The two men were summoned to give testimony on April 15 to address questions about the spending of state funds during Chen’s tenure as president between 2000 and 2008, according to the court. Wang, a prominent Tiananmen Square student leader in 1989, now lives in Taiwan after being exiled from China. The trial will be held in camera because it will be about how the former president, who has already been convicted in two separate bribery cases, spent the funds on what he has called “secret diplomatic missions,” and could reveal sensitive information that could impact the country’s security, the court said. Chen is serving a jail term of 17.5 years for bribery and corruption.
LAW
Sex offender rule unveiled
Following the rape and murder of a junior high school girl in Yunlin County last week, for which a man who had just been released from prison last month after completing a sentence for sexual assault stands accused, the Ministry of the Interior decided — after a whole-day meeting on Friday with representatives from several other ministries — to require sex offenders to report to the nearest police station in the precinct where they are registered as living the day after their release from jail. The ministry made the announcement in a statement issued late on Friday night. In addition to the new rule, the statement also said that police officers would also be asked to visit former sex offenders at home at least once a week, until further assessment by the police. The new rule takes effect immediately.
SOCIETY
Driver killed in collision
The Taiwanese driver of a truck died and seven Chinese tourists aboard a bus were injured yesterday in a two-vehicle collision in Tainan, firefighters said. The Chinese tourists were part of a 33-member group from Jiangsu Province that was touring Tainan. The seven injured — two men and five women — were taken to National Cheng Kung University Hospital and Chimei Hospital. Police said the dead driver, surnamed Chen (陳), might have been thrown from his cab in the accident. They quoted the bus driver as saying that he and Chen were driving in the same direction when the truck suddenly veered to the left, giving him no time to brake. Police are continuing their investigation.
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