CRIME
Illegal immigrant caught
A man from Xiamen, China, was arrested near a beach on Kinmen Island for trying to illegally enter Taiwan, the coast guard said yesterday. The 29-year-old man, surnamed Zhang (張), was caught swimming with the aid of a polyfoam board toward Kuningtou (古寧頭) beach at about 1:40am yesterday morning. The near-naked man was suffering from hypothermia and was rushed to Kinmen Hospital for treatment. Zhang told coast guard officers that he was sold at the age of four by his parents to a fisherman in Xiamen, where he grew up and became a deckhand. He said he was paid by the fisherman in food and clothes, but never in money. He said he decided to swim to Kinmen a day earlier and that he stripped off his clothes soon after he entered the water after finding that they were impeding his movement. He said he found the polyfoam board in the water and used it as a buoyancy aid.
MEDIA
Media to sponsor debates
The Central News Agency (CNA), Taiwan Public Television Service and four major newspapers are cooperating to host a series of presidential TV debates in the run-up to the presidential election in January. According to initial planning, the presidential candidates will take part in two televised debates, while the vice presidential candidates will hold one debate. Representatives of CNA and the four newspapers — the China Times, the Liberty Times (the Taipei Times’ sister newspaper), the United Daily News and Apple Daily — ask questions. Representatives from the organizing media are expected to visit the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) and the Democratic Progressive Party to officially invite the candidates to participate in the debates.
TRAVEL
Taipei-Seoul flights held up
Direct passenger flights between Taipei International Airport (Songshan) and Seoul’s Gimpo International Airport are unlikely to be implemented by the end of this year, the Civil Aeronautics Administration (CAA) said yesterday. CAA officials said the main concern was that Seoul might demand permission to operate direct cargo flights from its biggest airport to Taiwan. The government is worried that cargo flights between Seoul’s Incheon International Airport and Taiwan Taoyuan International Airport would trigger a price war between the two sides, which would hurt Taiwan’s cargo market share, a CAA official said.
CULTURE
Yilan folk festival begins
This year’s Yilan International Children’s Folklore and Folkgame Festival began on Saturday in Yilan County, drawing more than 16,000 visitors on opening day. Twelve groups of performers from 11 countries marched to the festival’s venue at the Chinshui Park, next to the Tungshan River, dressed in their national folk costumes to mark the opening of the annual festival, which promotes folk art and activities from Taiwan and other parts of the world. A total of 300 local children then danced to well-known Taiwanese folk music with moves that combined elements of martial arts, Taiwanese opera and clog dancing. The festival, which will run through Aug. 21, will continue its focus on performances, exhibitions, games and interaction among the participants, the organizer said. About 40 music and dance groups from more than 20 countries, including Russia, Burkina Faso, the Czech Republic and Indonesia, are expected to perform at the festival.
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