MILITARY
Yeh charged with desertion
A military intelligence officer who was brought back from the UK last month after 18 months out of the country has been indicted on desertion charges, prosecutors said yesterday. The offense carries a maximum sentence of five years in prison, according to the Criminal Code of the Armed Forces. Emily Yeh (葉玫), who was in military service in Greater Taichung, traveled to the UK in June 2012 without permission from her superiors. She had been granted vacation time from June 17 until June 24 of that year to visit Thailand, but failed to return. Yeh was later found to have traveled via Thailand to the UK, where she sought asylum. She took up residency in Newport, Wales, until her arrest on Dec. 10 last year for overstaying her visa. She was repatriated on Jan. 19 and has been in detention since then.
BANKING
Post office to remit renminbi
The public will soon be able to remit Chinese currency, the renminbi, directly to China from local post offices without having to convert the money into US dollars, Chunghwa Post Co said yesterday. Chunghwa Post will join other local banks in providing the service and said the service would reduce exchange risks. Currently, people who want to remit money to China through local post offices must first convert the funds into US dollars, while the recipient in China has to convert the money from US dollars to Chinese yuan. Local post offices conducted more than 14,000 transactions from Taiwan to China last year for a total amount of NT$1.3 billion (US$42.96 million), and more than 2,000 transactions from China to Taiwan worth a total of NT$400 million, the company said. Chunghwa Post will also lower its overseas transaction fees to NT$300 per transaction, it said.
EDUCATION
City announces English plan
The Taipei City Government yesterday said it plans to employ a foreign English teacher in each elementary school in the city as part of its efforts to promote English language learning. A test run of the program is to begin in September at eight schools in less-advantaged areas, the city’s Department of Education Director Lin Yi-hua (林奕華) said. The foreign employees must be qualified elementary-school teachers from English-speaking countries, Lin added. Since 2010, the city government has been promoting a project to set up an English Village in each of the city’s 12 administrative districts to help schools create a better English teaching environment. Twenty-six foreign teachers have been hired to work in the eight villages that have been opened so far. Another four villages are expected to be launched in August this year, the department said.
TECHNOLOGY
Taipei named No. 1 for Wi-Fi
Taipei, which offers hundreds of free public Wi-Fi hotspots, has been named one of the world’s most connected cities by London’s Daily Telegraph newspaper. Nine cities worldwide are mentioned in the article published by the online edition of the Telegraph under the travel section, with Taipei coming first on the list. The article said that getting online became even easier in Taiwan this week, with travelers allowed to register ahead of arrival to receive 30 days of free access to a national, government-backed network of more than 5,000 hotspots. The iTaiwan hotspots are marked on a zoomable map, which can be accessed at itaiwan.taiwan.net.tw/FitTravelRegister.aspx, the article 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
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
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