The Taipei District Court yesterday ordered the detention of two key suspects in an investigation into the use of a banned substance in weight-loss products.
Huang Chen-kang (黃振康), chairman of Wellcare Pharmaceutical Co, the manufacturer of Wellslim Plus+, and Wellcare research and development director Yeh Mei-keng (葉枚耕) were ordered into custody after the hearing.
The Taipei District Prosecutors’ Office last week asked the court to detain the pair, but they were released on bail. Prosecutors appealed the ruling to the Taiwan High Court, which ordered the district court to review the case.
The district court said the two failed to clear materials used in their products.
It said Huang was found to have colluded on his statement with other suspects by telephone, and he might seek to conspire with others about his statements if he remains free.
The case made headlines because of the involvement of former vice president Lien Chan’s (連戰) daughter, Lien Hui-hsin (連惠心), who invested in the company.
She was released on NT$2.5 million (US$85,000) bail on Thursday last week.
Lien Hui-hsin told prosecutors that she had invested NT$15 million in Geneherbs Biotechnology Co — which is also a manufacturer of weight-loss product Wellslim Plus+, which was confirmed to contain a banned substance, cetilistat, a lipase inhibitor designed to treat obesity. She said she was not responsible for company operation, nor did she know about the use of illegal substances.
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