CRIME
Man arrested over threats
A 55-year-old man, surnamed Wu (吳), was arrested yesterday for claiming he wanted to kill President Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九) and Premier Wu Den-yih (吳敦義). The Sijhih District (汐止), New Taipei City (新北市) resident made a telephone call at 5am to the Taipei City Government’s 1999 public service hotline threatening to kill Ma and the premier, Taipei police said. “The suspect Wu has been unemployed for a long time, plus it was recently the one-year anniversary of his mother’s death, so he was in a bad mood and was drinking from 7pm until 3am,” Xinyi District Police Precinct deputy Shih Ming-chen (石明哲) said. “He started calling 110, 119 and the 1999 hotline. The 1999 hotline later informed our precinct [about the call.]” Taipei police arrested the suspect at his home about noon for questioning. According to police, the suspect said he had no real plan to kill Ma or the premier, and he was only making complaints after getting drunk. He could faces charges of making threats.
DIPLOMACY
Lawmakers head for US
A group of legislators across party lines was to leave for the US last night to lobby Washington to approve a request to acquire F-16C/D aircraft and include Taiwan in its visa waiver program. The delegation is comprised of members of the Taiwan-USA Inter-Parliamentary Amity Association, led by Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) Legislator Lii Ming-shing (李明星). The group will stop in Los Angeles, Phoenix, Washington and New York during the 11-day trip. The lawmakers are expected to call on the US Department of State, the Pentagon, the House of Representatives and the Senate. Lii said the delegation would visit US representatives David Wu (吳振偉) and Judy Mary Chu (趙美心) in the hope that they will help push the US government to sell the fighters to Taiwan and encourage progress on the visa waiver front. In Arizona, the lawmakers will visit Luke Air Force Base, the only active duty F-16 training base in the world, Lii said. KMT Legislator Liao Wan-ju (廖婉汝) said the primary goal of the trip was to help bring about the F-16C/D aircraft sale. If the US can’t authorize the sale, then hopefully it will approve an upgrade for Taiwan’s F-16A/B fleet, Liao said.
EDUCATION
MOFA grants distributed
The Ministry of Foreign Affairs (MOFA) handed out scholarships yesterday to three graduate students specializing in East Asian studies in a bid to encourage more academic work related to countries in the region. The students were awarded research grants totaling up to NT$10,000 per month, as well as additional funding for overseas field studies, a ministry official said. Despite the frequent economic and social interaction between Taiwan and East Asian countries, there has been a lack of academic study on relevant topics, Minister of Foreign Affairs Timothy Yang (楊進添) said. Not as many people as expected applied for the scholarships, a ministry official said, but added that the ministry would continue to hold the scholarship competition each year.
URBAN AFFAIRS
Eric Chu visits California
New Taipei City (新北市) Mayor Eric Chu (朱立倫) visited sister community Los Angeles County on Tuesday and met Los Angeles County Supervisor Mike Antonovich, who said he hoped to visit Taiwan again at the end of this year. Chu and his delegation visited another sister community, Baltimore County, Maryland.
CRIME
Fraud suspects repatriated
Fourteen Taiwanese fraud suspects deported to China from the Philippines in February returned to Taiwan yesterday afternoon to stand trial, according to law enforcement officials. They were arrested in the Philippines in December and Taipei demanded that they be handed over to Taiwanese authorities. However, the Philippines sent them to China on Feb. 2, sparking a diplomatic row that soured ties between Taipei and Manila. Through negotiations between Taiwanese law enforcement authorities and their Chinese counterparts, China finally agreed to repatriate the 14 individuals, who are suspected of having defrauded mostly Chinese nationals of 140 million yuan (US$21.7 million) through telephone scams.
CRIME
Juice producer indicted
Owner of juice producer Ging Kuo Wang (金果王), Chen A-ho (陳阿和), was indicted yesterday for allegedly buying questionable clouding agents from Yu Shen Chemical Co and adding them to the drinks it produces, prosecutors from Taipei’s Shilin District (士林) said yesterday. Chen’s son and two employees were also indicted. Prosecutors said the four defendants were charged with violations of the Act Governing Food Sanitation (食品衛生管理法) and offenses against public safety and fraud. Prosecutors requested the court sentence Chen to 12 years in prison and fine him NT$10 million (US$3.3 million) and that his company be fined NY$30 million. Prosecutors requested that the other three defendants each be sentenced to six years in prison and fined NT$8 million. Food supplier Yu Shen Chemical Co has been accused of using di(2-ethylhexyl) phthalate, or DEHP, in clouding agents they sold to food
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