CRIME
China returns three inmates
Three Taiwanese who were imprisoned in China were sent back to Taiwan recently to serve out their sentences, the Ministry of Justice said yesterday. The three prisoners were repatriated for humanitarian reasons, as one of them was diagnosed with bone cancer, one had kidney surgery and the other was classified as elderly at the age of 63, the ministry said. They were each serving prison terms of about 13 years for drug offenses and have been transferred to Taipei Prison to serve out their sentences, the ministry said. It is the first time that China has repatriated Taiwanese prisoners from provinces other than Fujian, the ministry said, adding that one of the inmates had been serving time in Hunan Province and one in Guangxi Province. Since China began sending back Taiwanese prisoners last year, eight have been returned, the ministry said.
TRAVEL
Man forfeits cash at airport
A Taiwanese businessman who was trying to carry ¥9 million (US$74,810) into Taiwan on Wednesday lost about two-thirds of it after he failed to declare the cash and customs officers confiscated ¥6.6 million. The man, identified by his surname, Lin (林), told officials on his arrival at Taiwan Taoyuan International Airport that the money was to be used to pay his staff’s year-end bonuses. Unaware of the regulations, he hid the cash in his luggage, thinking that he would have to pay a tax on it if it was declared, Lin told the officers. Authorities seized ¥6.6 million and returned the equivalent of US$10,000 each to Lin and his traveling companion. Lin violated Articles 11 and 24 of the Foreign Exchange Regulation Act (管理外匯條例), which require travelers to declare any sum greater than US$10,000 of foreign currency per person, the Customs Administration 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