IMMIGRATION
Illegal immigrant arrested
A Chinese man has been detained for entering the country illegally after paddling 3km from China’s Fujian Province to Kinmen, apparently to observe next month’s presidential and legislative elections, an official said yesterday. “I want to see your elections, with campaign flags flying all over the place,” Guo Jiyong (郭智勇), 35, told reporters after he was arrested in Kinmen on Wednesday. “Taiwan and China are one country,” he said. “How can you arrest me for illegal entry?” A coast guard official said Guo would be repatriated to China.
WEATHER
Temperatures plummet
Temperatures plummeted in northern areas of the nation yesterday as a cold air mass moved down from China, the Central Weather Bureau said. After the mercury hit 30oC in several regions a day earlier, the bureau warned of the arrival of a cold front and a sudden onslaught of cold and wet weather. Forecasters said minimum temperatures in the north and northeast could drop to as low as 11oC over the weekend, with showers in those areas likely to continue through the first half of next week until the front moves away and temperatures rise again. However, the bureau said a milder, mostly dry weather pattern is expected for central and southern areas, with temperatures expected to range between 14oC and 26oC.
EDUCATION
Students prefer Japanese
Japanese is the most popular second foreign language among high school students, the Ministry of Education said yesterday. In high schools, English is a required course, while Japanese is the most frequently chosen optional foreign language, followed by French, the ministry said. In this year’s fall semester, nearly 38,000 high-school students chose to study Japanese from among 10 second foreign languages, the ministry said. It said Japan’s close proximity to Taiwan and the easy accessibility of Japanese learning materials are two factors that have contributed to the growing popularity of the language.
ENVIRONMENT
Poop scoopers in gold rush
An innovative scheme to keep the streets of the north of the nation clean has seen thousands of citizens dutifully collecting bags of dog excrement in the hope of winning NT$6,000 in gold. More than 4,000 residents of New Taipei City (新北市) have signed up for the competition since it was launched in early August and they have so far collected 14,000 bags. “The outcome of the campaign beat all our expectations,” said Lai Tzu-hsiu (賴子秀) of the city’s environmental protection bureau. Those taking part in the scheme have been given one lottery ticket for each bag of excrement they collect.
CRIME
‘Severed hand’ bilk jailed
A man who was found guilty of attempting insurance fraud by severing a friend’s hand was sentenced to 11 months in prison yesterday. The Supreme Court ruled that the defendant had helped to inflict an injury so that his friend could claim on several insurance policies. However, the 45-year-old defendant, surnamed Chen (陳), was given a light sentence because he confessed to the crime and had shown good behavior, the verdict said. The court found that in 2009, Chen paid a man NT$50,000 to knock down his friend on the street, after which Chen cut off his friend’s left hand and discarded it. The friend, surnamed Chiang (江), later filed several insurance claims, but police unraveled the scheme based on fingerprint evidence found at the scene.
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