CRIME
Immigrants flee NIA officers
Two undocumented Vietnamese women fled on foot from immigration officers on Wednesday evening after they were arrested on charges of illegally living and working in the country, immigration officials said yesterday. National Immigration Agency officials based in Hsinchu County said three officials arrested the women and were driving them to a detention center. When the officials opened the car doors upon arriving at the detention center, the women fled on foot, officials said. One of them was able to free herself from the handcuffs because she was thin enough, but the other fled with her hands still cuffed. Prosecutors said they would look into the case for any irregularities or negligence on the part of the officials.
ENVIRONMENT
EPA eyes better air quality
Hospitals, schools below high-school level and government agencies are expected to be priority locations regulated by the Indoor Air Quality Control Act (室內空氣品質管理法) that was passed earlier this week, the Environmental Protection Administration (EPA) said yesterday. The act mandates that owners, managers or employers are responsible for maintaining air quality on their premises. Improving indoor air quality would help cut health expenses by 12 percent and save about NT$4 billion (US$132 million) a year, Environmental Protection Administration Deputy Minister Chiu Wen-yen (邱文彥) said. He said the agency would announce other locations to be regulated by the act based on various criteria, including the total number of people using them and the health risks. He did not elaborate. Public venues such as the Taiwan High Speed Rail service and the Taipei Mass Rapid Transit System, as well as department stores, would be included in the new regulations, he added.
CRIME
Schools probed over bribery
Prosecutors yesterday launched a second wave of investigations into cases of alleged bribery involving firms supplying school lunches, searching 20 elementary schools and junior high schools in New Taipei City (新北市). The Banciao District Prosecutors’ Office said that four more elementary-school principals, from the city’s Banciao (板橋), Lujhou (蘆州) and Tucheng (土城) districts, had been questioned. The principals are suspected of accepting cash bribes or gifts from catering firms, the office said. In the first wave of investigations, Banciao prosecutors on Oct. 28 detained 12 people, including three principals, a middleman and employees at schools overseeing lunch programs. The prosecutors’ office was tipped off in May that several elementary-school principals in New Taipei City had been accepting kickbacks from lunch suppliers. Most elementary schools and junior high schools in New Taipei City have cafeterias that are supplied by privately-run catering companies.
CHARITY
Rummage sale at TAS
The Taipei American School (TAS) Orphanage Club will hold its semi-annual rummage sale and flea market in the school’s lobby and forecourt tomorrow, starting at 10am, rain or shine. The flea market will end at 3pm, while the rummage sale will continue until 5pm. Items in the rummage sale include clothing, toys, household items, artwork, consumer electronics and furniture. There is no admission fee and all of the proceeds from the sale benefit needy children and orphans in Taiwan and overseas. There will also be Indonesian and Indian food for sale. The school is located at 800, Zhongshan N Rd Sec 6, Tianmu (天母), Taipei
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