CRIME
Lee to miss court date
Former president Lee Teng-hui (李登輝) will miss a court date for oral arguments scheduled for today over his indictment on charges of embezzling state funds because he is still recovering from a vertebral artery stenting procedure performed on July 12, Lee’s office said yesterday. Lee is still suffering from fever for unknown reasons and has not been released by Taipei Veterans General Hospital although the surgery was a success, office director Wang Yan-chun (王燕軍) said in a press release. The Supreme Prosecutors’ Office Special Investigation Division on June 30, 2011, indicted the 90-year-old and his aide, Liu Tai-ying (劉泰英), accusing the pair of siphoning off US$7.8 million from secret diplomatic funds to establish the Taiwan Research Institute.
SOCIETY
Family van falls in gorge
A van carrying a family of seven fell into a gorge near Hehuanshan (合歡山) in Nantou County on Sunday, possibly because of brake failure, leaving one person dead and six injured. Kuo Shih-liang (郭世良) told police that he was driving a van carrying his family and the family of his sister-in-law down the mountainous Taiwan Provincial Highway 14A at 10am when the van’s brakes failed and the steering wheel jammed, according to the Nantou County Police Bureau. The car then cut through the oncoming lane at high speed and fell into a 70m-deep gorge, police said. Firefighters located the van, rescued those in it and sent them to a nearby hospital for treatment. Six of them were found to have suffered fractures or head injuries, and the other passenger arrived at the hospital without a pulse and was later pronounced dead. Police were still investigating the cause of the incident as of Sunday night.
SPORTS
Hsieh to pitch Universiade
Taipei Mayor Hau Lung-bin (郝龍斌) yesterday met with Hsieh Su-wei (謝淑薇), the nation’s first tennis player to win a Grand Slam title, and invited her to serve as a spokeswoman for the 2017 Summer Universiade in Taipei, to which the Wimbledon champion agreed. Hsieh, who attended the meeting at Taipei City Hall accompanied by her father, Hsieh Tzu-lung (謝子龍), said she believes her new job will “help market and promote the sport of tennis.” Hsieh, 27, claimed the women’s doubles championship at Wimbledon on July 6 with Peng Shuai (彭帥) of China, becoming the first Taiwanese senior player to win a Grand Slam title. The Taipei Universiade is scheduled to take place from Aug. 19 to Aug. 30, 2017.
ENVIRONMENT
Chinese trash hits Kinmen
Kinmen authorities were suffering from headaches again after trash from China washed up on the beaches of the outlying island in the wake of a recent typhoon. Beaches in northwestern Kinmen are inundated with a great deal of trash from China every summer, from empty liquor bottles and plastic bottles to shoes, styrofoam and discarded lighters washed ashore. In winter, it is the turn of beaches in the island’s northeast. Kinmen National Park said the beaches have been bombarded with litter in the wake of the recent Typhoon Soulik and Tropical Storm Cimaron. The park has asked the nearly 10 communities that have “adopted” sections of the beaches to increase the speed of cleanup operations and will also hire extra workers to help restore the beaches. “The root of the problem is that China’s Fujian Province, which is very close to Kinmen, should carry out river management more carefully,” park officials said.
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