CRIME
Man arrested over threats
A man was arrested yesterday for allegedly threatening to attack Gaea Books and “behead” its editor-in-chief after the publishing company repeatedly rejected his submissions. The man, surnamed Cho (卓), was taken into custody in Taoyuan after making the threats on Facebook, police said. After acquiring the 20-year-old suspect’s IP address with the help of Facebook, police were able to catch him one day before the day on which he threatened to burn the publisher’s office down. Cho, who has had his work rejected by Gaea Books 17 times, began posting threatening notes on the social networking site under a stolen online identity last month, police said. The frustrated writer has penned sci-fi and horror stories for the past six years and frequently criticized the publisher online for rejecting his work. At the instigation of other frustrated writers, Cho in January created a Facebook page for people like him. Last month, he started posting pictures of gas canisters and knives that led to his being reported to the police.
WEATHER
Rainy weekend ahead
Much of the nation is in for a mostly wet and relatively cold weekend after a weather front passed by the country yesterday and was followed by a cold air mass that will cool temperatures in northern Taiwan to as low as 12oC early today, the Central Weather Bureau said. The front arriving from the north last night brought rain to the north, while also drenching the east and the mountainous parts of the south, the bureau added. Heavy rain is forecast to hit the coastal regions in the north and the mountains in Greater Taipei. As the mercury plunges in the nation’s north today, the central areas are expected to see similarly cold temperatures of 14oC, while thermometers in the south will register 16oC to 17oC, the bureau said.
ENVIRONMENT
Penghu joins bays club
Penghu on Friday became an official member of the Most Beautiful Bays in the World Club, after the certificate of membership was presented to Penghu County Commissioner Wang Chien-fa (王乾發) by club president Galip Gur at the International Tourism fair in Berlin. The UNESCO-sponsored non-governmental organization was founded in 1997 and is dedicated to promoting the preservation and sustainable management of coastal areas. It is comprised of about 37 bays spread across 28 countries and territories worldwide, including San Francisco Bay, China’s Qingdao Bay, Halong Bay in Vietnam and France’s Mont Saint-Michel. Penghu was inducted into the club last year after its application was approved in 2012.
CULTURE
AIT fetes TRA with photos
The American Institute in Taiwan (AIT) has announced plans to post a historical photograph on Facebook every day in the run-up to the 35th anniversary of the enactment of the Taiwan Relations Act (TRA), a cornerstone of US-Taiwan ties. “For each of the next 35 days, we will feature an image symbolizing the strength and depth of the relationship between Taiwan and the United States,” the institute said in a Facebook post on Friday. The TRA was enacted on April 10, 1979, to maintain commercial, cultural and other ties between Americans and Taiwanese after Washington switched diplomatic recognition from Taipei to Beijing. The act pledges to help ensure peace, security and stability in the Western Pacific while promoting US foreign policy. It also commits Washington “to provide Taiwan with arms of a defensive character.”
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