CRIME
Alleged fraudster deported
A Taiwanese man wanted on charges of defrauding local listed tech companies of more than NT$300 million (US$10.2 million), who fled to China, was deported on Thursday. Ku Huan-tang used his position as assistant to a firm’s general manager to collude in 2002 with another manager, Liu Chun-yi, in writing bad checks to purchase circuit boards. Investigators declined to identify the companies targeted. Ku and Liu escaped to China in May 2003 before their checks bounced, resulting in huge losses for the companies involved. Investigators brought charges against the two in 2005, seeking four-and-a-half-year and six-and-a-half-year sentences for Liu and Ku respectively. Investigators were tipped off about their whereabouts in March last year and worked with police in Hunan Province to catch them. Liu was deported in September that year.
CULTURE
Minister to visit Hong Kong
Minister of Culture Lung Ying-tai (龍應台) said on Thursday she will visit Hong Kong on Nov. 28 to deepen bilateral cultural exchanges. During the visit, Lung will visit major cultural institutions and call for greater Taiwan-Hong Kong cooperation in culture and the arts. Among those she plans to visit is Michael Lynch, chief executive officer of the Board of the West Kowloon Cultural District Authority. The district is the flagship project in Hong Kong’s goal of becoming a new Asian cultural center, and the construction of several performing arts centers and museums is scheduled for completion around 2015, Lung said. By that time, Lung said, some of Taiwan’s new cultural establishments, such as the Taipei Performing Arts Center, Taichung Metropolitan Opera House and Weiwuying Center for the Performing Arts, should also be completed.
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