CRIME
Woman’s jail term upheld
A woman jailed after she sent an online message asking how to dispose of the body when her four-year-old daughter died has lost the final appeal of her eight-year prison sentence. The Supreme Court on Thursday upheld a lower court’s decision against the woman, surnamed Lee (李), who was found guilty of failing to stop a relative from killing her daughter after months of systematic abuse. The court said Lee took her daughter to stay at the Taipei home of a cousin in 2009 and witnessed her frequent beatings of the girl. The girl died when she was placed in a tiny closet after suffering serious trauma to her neck and spine.
POLITICS
Ma reappoints premier
The Presidential Office confirmed yesterday evening that President Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九) had approved the Cabinet’s resignation earlier yesterday and reappointed Sean Chen (陳冲) as premier. Ma praised Chen for his expertise in law and finance, as well as his efforts in implementing government policies, said Presidential Office spokesman Fan Chiang Tai-chi (范姜泰基). Presidential Office Secretary-General Tseng Yung-chuan (曾永權) and Deputy Secretary-General Lo Chih-chiang (羅智強) will stay on in their posts, while Ma approved the resignation of another deputy secretary-general, Liu Pao-kui (劉寶貴), for personal reasons, he said. Chen led the Cabinet in resigning en masse on Thursday, in line with constitutional practice, ahead of the swearing-in of the president on May 20.
TRAVEL
BVI gives visa-free status
Republic of China passport holders can now enter the British Virgin Islands (BVI) on a visa-free scheme, according to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. The privilege went into effect on April 3, according to a recent confirmation of the agreement by the BVI government, said James Lee (李光章), director-general of the ministry’s Department of European Affairs. In January, the ministry announced that the BVI would be the 125th country or region to grant Taiwanese visa-free entry or landing visa privileges, but added the effective date had yet to be confirmed with the BVI government. The visa-free access applies to Taiwanese visiting the country for less than six months on business or for tourism, family and student purposes, he said. The BVI visa-waiver program follows the one adopted by the British government in March 2009. The BVI is the sixth British overseas territory — after Bermuda, Gibraltar, the Turks and Caicos Islands, St Helena and the Falkland Islands — to establish such an agreement with Taiwan.
SOCIETY
Sand and salt festival set
A festival featuring sand and salt sculptures will take place in Greater Tainan City next month to showcase the region’s rich natural resources. The festival, which opens on June 2 and runs through July 15, marks the Tourism Bureau’s first attempt to bring together “the two gifts from the ocean” to promote local tourism, bureau officials said. The festival will also feature the largest salt sculpture ever made in Taiwan. The artwork, about 400m2, will be a collaboration between sculptors from Taiwan, Canada, Japan, China and the Netherlands. A total of 15 sand sculptures and 22 salt sculptures will be on display, including cartoon characters, animals from the Chinese zodiac and even sports figures such as NBA basketball player Jeremy Lin (林書豪) and Major League Baseball pitcher Chen Wei-yin (陳偉殷).
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