CRIME
Spy’s conviction upheld
The Taiwan High Court yesterday handed down a 17-month sentence, suspended for five years, to Lai Kun-chieh (賴坤玠), who was convicted of spying for China. In the third retrial of the case, Lai was also ordered to pay a NT$200,000 fine during his probation period. The ruling can be appealed. The court ruling noted that Lai was arrested in May 2011 while handing over a bribe of almost US$20,000 to a former schoolmate who was an army officer, surnamed Tsao (曹), who had tipped off authorities about Lai. The court said Lai had been approached by Chinese agents in February 2010 while he was working in China. After returning to Taiwan, Lai asked Tsao for secret information regarding technical specifications for missile systems.
DIPLOMACY
New envoys in Taipei
Two new European envoys took up their posts in Taipei earlier this month, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs said yesterday. Slovakia’s new representative is Michal Kovac, a senior diplomat who took up his duties on Aug. 14, the ministry said. Kovac has expressed hopes of deepening ties in the areas of trade, technology, culture and education, it said. Taiwan and Slovakia established reciprocal representative offices 10 years ago and recently signed agreements on e-government cooperation, avoiding double taxation, and other matters, the ministry said. Henrik Persson took office as Sweden’s top envoy on Aug. 15, the ministry said.
CROSS-STRAIT TIES
More flights to Urumqi
The number of flights from Taiwan’s Taoyuan International Airport to Urumqi, China, will increase from three a week to six, as China Airlines (CAL) expands code-sharing services with Guangdong-based China Southern Airlines, CAL said yesterday. Increasing the number of flights to and from Urumqi will allow better operations flexibility for both airlines, it said. Both airlines are members of the SkyTeam Alliance, one of the world’s largest airline alliances. Urumqi, the capital of the Xinjiang Autonomous Region, is the ninth city serviced under the cooperation since the two carriers started code-sharing in 2010. CAL, which operates 33 out of the 68 shared flights, said it aims to better promote the Taoyuan-Urumqi route, which was inaugurated in June. The route has proven popular, with seat occupation consistently topping 70 percent, the airline said.
CRIME
Sex trafficking ring busted
Police and immigration officers yesterday busted a human trafficking ring and arrested 11 suspects on suspicion of forcing foreign women into prostitution. The officers broke into a building in Chiayi with a forklift and rescued 10 Indonesian women who were being held captive there, the Tainan District Prosecutors’ Office said. Ten of the suspects arrested are Taiwanese and the other is an Indonesian woman. They were picked up in several locations in Chiayi and Greater Tainan, the office said. A gas gun, account books and six packets of drugs were also seized in the raids. The office said the traffickers were charging customers between NT$3,000 and NT$5,000 for sex. Indonesian women working in northern Taiwan who had run away from their jobs were recruited to work as hostesses by a member of the ring, an Indonesian herself, but once the women arrived in Chiayi the gang kept them locked in a residence, the office said. The gang used drugs to keep the women compliant, it 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