TOURISM
Lightning strikes aircraft
A Hong Kong Express Airways flight carrying 129 people to Greater Taichung made an emergency return to Hong Kong shortly after takeoff yesterday, after it was reportedly struck by lightning. The plane, a Boeing 737, took off from Hong Kong International Airport at 12:56pm, but the pilot contacted the airport and requested permission to return shortly after takeoff, saying it seemed that the aircraft had been struck by lightning. The plane landed in Hong Kong at 1:59pm with all the passengers safe and unhurt. It took off again at 4:08pm for Greater Taichung and arrived at 5:42pm.
EMPLOYMENT
Cafe chain gets fine
The 85oC cafe chain has been fined for violating the Employment Services Act (就業服務法) for refusing to hire a Chinese woman with a residency permit, Taipei City’s Department of Labor said on Wednesday. After a complete investigation following a complaint from the Chinese woman, the cafe chain was fined NT$100,000 for discrimination in its hiring practices at a store in Taipei City, the department said. According to the Act Governing Relations Between the People of the Taiwan Area and the Mainland Area (台灣地區與大陸地區人民關係條例), Chinese nationals are able to work legally in Taiwan after receiving residency certificates. In response, 85oC spokeswoman Kathy Chung (鐘靜如) said the branch’s superintendent has been given administrative demerits because of the case. She said the company would file an appeal with the city government about the incident, since the rejection was a result of poor communication. Chung added that over the past eight years, the company has hired hundreds of foreign workers, including many from China and Vietnam.
ESPIONAGE
Alleged China spy detained
A Taiwanese businessman based in China was detained early yesterday after being questioned a day earlier on suspicion of spying for China, officials said. The suspect, surnamed Cheng (鄭), was first questioned by the Investigation Bureau and then handed over to the Taipei District Prosecutors’ Office for more questioning. Prosecutors gained court approval to detain Cheng on grounds that he might escape to China, where his wife owns property and Cheng has a business in Fuzhou, Fujian Province. Cheng’s wife was also summoned for questioning as a witness. The investigators said they received a tipoff from a military source that Cheng had been seeking to meet one of his previous schoolmates, now a military officer, since last year. Cheng reportedly attempted to lure the officer to a third country to meet with Chinese individuals, investigators said. Instead of leaving for China with Cheng, the officer reported the case to his superiors.
SEISMOLOGY
Hualien quake shakes Taipei
An earthquake with a magnitude of 5.4 on the Richter scale shook eastern Taiwan at 9:58am yesterday, according to the Central Weather Bureau. The quake’s epicenter was about 16.9km north of Hualien County Hall at a depth of 23km, the bureau’s Seismology Center said. The strongest tremors, with an intensity of four on a five-point scale, were felt in Hualien County’s Taroko and Hualien City areas, as well as in Nanao (南澳), Yilan County, the center said. The temblor was felt with an intensity of three in several regions of central and northeastern Taiwan, and two in other regions in northern and southern Taiwan.
CRIME
Police hunt diplomat killer
Dominican Republic police will spare no effort to apprehend the person who killed a Taiwanese diplomat there earlier this week, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs said yesterday. The police have appointed a special commission to deal with the case, which will notify the Republic of China embassy about the progress of the investigation, ministry spokesman James Chang (章計平) said. “The police chief has noted that they will keep in close contact with Taiwan’s embassy and inform it of the investigation results,” he said. Ambassador Thomas Hou (侯平福) has also called on the police authorities to solve the case as soon as possible, Chang said. The body of Julia Ou (區美珍), a second secretary at Taiwan’s embassy in the Caribbean country, has been sent for a post-mortem examination at a national institute, Chang added. Ou was found stabbed to death in her apartment on Tuesday morning after she failed to show up at work.
EDUCATION
Taiwan Academy in accord
Officials from the Autonomous University of Hidalgo State in the City of Pachuca in northern Mexico signed an agreement yesterday to form a partnership with the Taiwan Academy. Andrea Lee (李新穎), Taiwan’s representative to Mexico, and Humberto Veras Godoy, president of the university, signed the agreement on behalf of their respective institutions. Taiwan is Mexico’s seventh-largest source of imports and its ninth-largest export trading partner, Lee said, adding that Taiwanese high-tech firms have invested over US$600 million and have created about 30,000 jobs in the country. In the field of education, Taiwan has been providing scholarships to more than 160 Mexican students each year allowing them to study in Taiwan, Lee added.
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