POLLUTION
PM2.5 levels to rise
Yunlin County residents should prepare for poor air quality today and tomorrow, due to a lack of wind to disperse pollutants, the Environmental Protection Administration said yesterday. The administration said air quality in southern cities and counties was in the “unhealthy” range, with the key indicator for PM2.5 — fine particles measuring less than 2.5 micrometers in diameter — at level 8 on a 10-point scale. In other regions, PM2.5 measurements were at relatively safe levels from 3 to 6, the administration said. It said level-7 PM2.5 concentrations exceed 54 micrograms per cubic meter and are considered high, and that measurements above level 7 are deemed severe enough to cause health problems.
SOCIETY
Woman arrested over murder
A Vietnamese woman has been arrested on suspicion of killing her boyfriend and dismembering his body after a quarrel, police said. Nguyen Thi Soi, 33, was detained at her workplace in Kaohsiung as she was preparing to return to Vietnam on Friday, police said. She faces charges of killing Kieu Van Manh, 43, chopping up his body and disposing of the remains in a ditch. The two came to work in Taiwan separately earlier this year, police said, adding that Kieu was slain apparently for wanting to end their relationship. The case came to light on Nov. 18, when a dog was seen carrying a human skull in its mouth. The rest of Kieu’s remains were later found in a bag used for pig feed. Based on the lead, investigators located a pig farm in Kaohsiung’s Luzhu District (路竹), where Nguyen was employed as a caregiver. Police said that the victim met Nguyen at the farm on Oct. 15, shortly before he disappeared.
HEALTH & SAFETY
Traffic fatalities down
There were 1,380 traffic fatalities in the first 10 months of this year on the nation’s roads, a drop of 112 year-on-year, according to the Ministry of Transportation and Communications. In the 10-month period, Kaohsiung had the most A1 incidents — traffic accidents in which at least one life is lost within 24 hours. Kaohsiung recorded 149 deaths, followed by Tainan with 131 deaths and Changhua County with 108, according to the ministry. However, the figures showed a decrease of 45, 20 and 10 deaths in the three areas respectively from the same period of last year. Outlying Lienchiang County has the best traffic record in the nation, reporting zero traffic fatalities for six years in a row, the ministry said.
CRIME
Man arrested over drugs
Police on Friday said they recently arrested a man for allegedly smuggling more than 1,000kg of chloroephedrine — a substance that can be used to produce amphetamines — from China into Taiwan. The 1,003kg of chloroephedrine, packaged in 106 bags, could be used to produce 700kg of amphetamines, worth about NT$200 million (US$6.09 million), the Criminal Investigation Bureau said. The bags were found following a tip-off, hidden among 700 packages of construction materials in a cargo container during an operation at Keelung Customs, police said. The operation came after months of intelligence-gathering. Following a later search operation, the police arrested a 22-year-old suspect surnamed Lin (林). Lin said he had come to take delivery of the “construction materials” for someone else, but he was unable to provide details of the origin of the NT$10 million used to pay for the importation of the construction material shipment.
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