The Marine Corps’ grueling “Paradise Road” test to win Amphibious Reconnaissance and Patrol Unit certification was listed as a reasonable training maneuver and not mistreatment under an amendment to Criminal Code of the Armed Forces (陸海空軍刑法) passed by the legislature yesterday.
To pass the test, trainees must crawl along a 50m-long rock and coral-filled path and complete a variety of exercises along the way.
It is considered “necessary training” to for service personnel who hope to become frogmen.
Photo courtesy of the National Geographic Channel
The “Paradise Road” test is the final stage of a 10-week intensive training session that recruits for the marine’s Amphibious Reconnaissance and Patrol Unit have to undergo that challenges their fitness and resilience to the limit.
In the wake of the death of 24-year-old army corporal Hung Chung-chiu (洪仲丘), who died on July 4 last year after being forced to exercise as punishment for taking a smartphone onto his base, there has been widespread public discussion about reforming the military’s management system, as well as other cases of abuse to men serving their mandatory conscription service.
The Executive Yuan proposed the amendment that passed yesterday to establish a definition of “abuse” in the hopes of prevent a recurrence of the Hung tragedy, because the code did not give any guidance on what kind of behavior by commanders would constitute an abuse of subordinates.
The amendment stipulates that inhuman treatment of service personnel in excess of what is necessary for education, training, service or combat and insults the nation’s military forces shall be considered “abuse.”
Under the amendment, the Ministry of National Defense must draw up bylaws to define what is necessary for education, training, service and combat.
Meanwhile, lawmakers passed an amendment to the Medical Care Act (醫療法) to expand the government’s assistance to patients from low-income to low-and-middle income families who need of emergency medical treatment.
The amendment requires hospitals and clinics to provide emergency medical care to patients regardless of their ability to pay for such treatment.
It also requires municipal and county social administrative authorities to provide subsidies to such patients to help them pay for such treatment.
Previously the act’s requirement mandating hospitals and clinics provide emergency treatment only applied to people from low-income families.
Lawmakers also passed an amendment to the Labor Pension Act (勞工退休金條例) that requires employers to make monthly deposits into retirement funds for foreign employees who are married to Taiwanese and who hold residency and work permits.
The deposit shall be equal to 6 percent of the employee’s wages.
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
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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