CRIME
Prostitution suspects caught
Fourteen Taiwanese have been arrested for allegedly coercing Southeast Asian women into prostitution, police said yesterday. The prostitution ring, based in Miaoli County, had collaborated with manpower agencies and human smuggling groups to lure the women, who were mostly from Indonesia and Vietnam, from their home countries, police said. The women were locked up and forced to work as prostitutes, even when they were ill, police said. Many were domestic helpers who ran away from their original employers. Some of the women had to service 10 or more clients a day and had been subjected to violent treatment, police said, but did not elaborate. Eleven women were rescued during a police raid on Thursday when 14 members of the ring and two customers were arrested, the Criminal Investigation Bureau said.
CHINA
Chinese tourists avoid vote
China has instructed tour operators to avoid arranging tour groups to Taiwan in the weeks leading up to the Jan. 14 presidential vote, Taiwanese travel agents said yesterday. “We are not surprised by the move as it is a sensitive time ahead of the election and the [Chinese] authorities want to be cautious,” said Roget Hsu (許高慶), secretary-general of the Travel Agent Association of ROC, Taiwan. A manager at a Taipei-based travel agency, who asked to be identified only by his surname, Lee (李), said his Chinese partner agencies have been urged to refrain from sending tourists to Taiwan in the two weeks before the poll. It would be bad for the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) if Chinese tourists were spotted at its campaign rallies, as the opposition could describe it as interference in the election, he said. However, calls to travel agents in Beijing indicated no new restrictions had been put in place. Nor was there any indication of new rules on the Web site of China’s aviation authority.
POLITICS
TNC calls for eco campaigns
The fledgling Taiwan National Congress party (TNC) said yesterday the nation’s presidential and legislative election campaigns were generating large amounts of pollution, and urged the major parties to adopt campaign strategies that minimized waste. The party estimated that if the more than 150 legislative candidates from the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) and Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) used campaign flags, they would generate 4.59 million kilograms of carbon dioxide emissions. The party also took aim at other campaign products, including the DPP’s “piggy banks” and the KMT’s “good luck charms,” saying they would continue to contaminate the environment long after the election. It urged the two parties to adopt more environmentally friendly campaign tactics.
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