CRIME
Headless cats spark probe
New Taipei City police launched an investigation yesterday after the headless bodies of four kittens were found discarded in a bush behind a temple on Old Street in Tamsui District (淡水). The Tamsui Precinct said police were collecting evidence and reviewing surveillance videos that might have captured the suspects killing or disposing of the bodies of the kittens. Anyone found responsible could be liable for substantial fines under the Animal Protection Act (動物保護法). The remains of the cats were discovered by a local cat lover, police said, adding that the kittens were only about a month old and it looked like they had been beheaded with a sharp knife. Judging by the state of decomposition and number of insects, the bodies seem to have been dumped behind Fuyou Temple some time ago, police said.
ENTERTAINMENT
Korean stars leave Taiwan
South Korean pop sensation Psy and other South Korean artists left Taiwan yesterday after a performance at Taoyuan County Stadium. Sporting a white top and sunglasses, the 36-year-old singer smiled and waved to fans gathered at Taiwan Taoyuan International Airport alongside other artists from South Korean record label and talent agency YG Entertainment. The “YG Family 2014 Galaxy Tour: Power in Taiwan” concert on Saturday evening featured Psy, BIGBANG, girl group 2NE1, alternative hip-hop group Epik High and male group WINNER, among others from South Korean record label and talent agency. The entertainers belted out a total of 40 songs during the three-hour concert, which attracted 20,000 fans. The concert climaxed when Psy took to the stage and performed favorites Father, Gentleman and his best-known hit Gangnam Style to a screaming crowd. The show is part of a worldwide concert tour by YG artists that began in April in Japan.
EARTHQUAKE
Quake rocks the northeast
A magnitude 5.0 quake rocked northeastern Taiwan at 12:47pm yesterday, Central Weather Bureau data showed. The epicenter was located at sea about 47.4km east of Yilan County Hall at a depth of 84.4km. The earthquake’s intensity, which gauges the effect of a temblor, was highest in Yilan’s Nanao Township (南澳), where it measured 3. An intensity of 2 was recorded in Yilan City, Taipei’s Xinyi District (信義), New Taipei City’s Banciao District (板橋) and Taoyuan. Despite the tremor, yesterday was a pleasant day in Taipei, with the mercury rising to 32.3?C at 1:05pm, signaling a marked rise in temperature compared with recent weeks as winter approaches. Other parts of western Taiwan also saw daytime highs of more than 31?C, including Banciao, Greater Taichung and Greater Tainan, the bureau said.
CROSS-STRAIT TIES
Hotel death a mystery
A Chinese executive who was visiting Taiwan as a member of a legal services delegation from China’s Anhui Province was found dead yesterday morning at a hotel in Taitung County. According to a preliminary investigation conducted by police, Anhui Construction Engineering Group vice chairman Li Changbin (李長斌), who was also a deputy secretary of the Chinese Communist Party’s committee at the group, might have experienced a sudden death at the hotel. The cause of death remains unknown and is being probed by Taitung prosecutors.
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