EDUCATION
EU education fair opens
The annual European Education Fair Taiwan (EEFT) opened yesterday in Taipei, offering visitors an opportunity to learn more about educational opportunities in Europe. The two-day event incorporates 115 universities and colleges from 12 European countries. “Europe is wide open to Taiwanese students and ready to welcome them with its best universities, business and engineering schools,” Bureau Francais de Taipei director Patrick Bonneville said. Among the countries involved, the UK has the largest contingent, with 60 participating institutions, while Denmark is a first-time exhibitor. The fair also features an arts and design corner illustrating various studies that have been undertaken by Taiwanese students in the UK. The EEFT will also take place in Greater Kaohsiung on Tuesday.
ENVIRONMENT
Bureau donates for cats
Th Council of Agriculture’s Forestry Bureau on Friday donated US$10,000 to the Switzerland-based International Union for Conservation of Nature Cat Specialist Group, which will be channeled into conservation projects for small cat species in Southeast Asia. Taiwan has been sponsoring the cat specialist group since 2006 through various projects and publications, such as a feline digital library, a special issue of the organization’s magazine Cats of the World and a project to produce educational material on the conservation of wild cats. The donations show Taiwan’s active participation in international organizations and fulfill its obligations to the international community, officials of the Taipei Cultural and Economic Delegation in Switzerland said.
CRIME
Prosecutor charged with graft
A Chiayi prosecutor was arrested yesterday on suspicion of taking bribes from hot spring resorts. Chou Chih-jung (周志榮), head of the Ministry of Justice’s Agency Against Corruption, on Friday morning led investigators to search Prosecutor Chan Chao-shu’s (詹昭書) office and his residence in Chiayi, as well as houses belonging to Chan’s family in Hsinchu City and New Taipei City (新北市). Chan was detained yesterday following an interrogation in which he remained silent the whole time and all questions were answered by Chan’s attorneys, Chou said. The agency said Hsinchu hot spring resorts had complained about resorts constructed in a reserved mountainside area that pumped spring water without licenses. Chan, then a Hsinchu prosecutor tasked with conservation matters, conspired with spring resorts’ runners to cover their abuse of reserved lands, the agency alleges. The agency said Chan took bribes of about NT$1 million (US$30,000) and received two cars and one motorcycle as gifts from hot spring resort operators.
CRIME
Alleged gangsters extradited
Four Taiwanese who were allegedly involved in illegal gambling and organized crime have been sent back to Taiwan, the Bureau of Immigration of the Philippines said yesterday. According to the bureau, the four suspects, identified only by their surnames, Chang (張), Yeh (葉), Chen (陳) and Wu (吳), were arrested on Sept. 27 during a raid on a group involved in telecommunications fraud in the Philippines. The Philippine authorities then contacted representatives of Taiwan’s Investigation Bureau, which found that the four were wanted in Taiwan for involvement in other cases. The four suspects have been included on Philippines’ blacklist and are banned from enteringthe country again, authorities 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