POLITICS
Chen hopes to attend dinner
Former president Chen Shui-bian (陳水扁), who is on medical parole from Taichung Prison, on Monday submitted a formal application to the prison seeking permission to attend a dinner to be held by the Ketagalan Foundation on Saturday. The dinner is to be held in honor of Chen, a founding member, on the foundation’s 11th anniversary. Chen expressed his desire to attend the event when the prison sent officials to visit him at his home in Kaohsiung on Friday. At the prison’s request, the former president filled out an application and submitted it to the prison, said Janice Chen (陳昭姿), his medical team’s spokeswoman. Taichung Prison deputy warden Su Kun-ming (蘇坤銘) said the prison had received Chen’s faxed application and would begin to review his request upon receipt of the original document. Chen, who was in office from 2000 to 2008, had served more than six years of a 20-year prison term on several convictions for corruption before he was released on medical parole in January last year.
CONSUMER
No time limit on discounts
The four major convenience store chains will no longer set a deadline for consumers to claim pre-paid coffee or tea drinks, the Consumer Protection Committee said yesterday. The four chains frequently offer discount schemes for consumers who buy two cups of coffee or tea at once, with the option of claiming the second cup within a given period. However, consumers had complained that the deadline — such as only one week — was too short. The committee said it urged the companies to uphold the principles of equality and mutual benefit, and the four agreed to cancel the time limit.
CRIME
Wong’s travel ban eased
Prosecutors on Monday agreed to temporarily lift an overseas travel ban on former Academia Sinica president Wong Chi-huey (翁啟惠), who is planning to take part in an annual meeting of the American Society of Clinical Oncology from Friday to Tuesday next week in Chicago. The Shilin District Prosecutors’ Office permitted Wong to leave the country from today to Wednesday next week on the condition that he post a bond of NT$2 million (US$61,293). Wong is under investigation for insider trading allegations involving OBI Pharma, a biopharmaceutical company based in Taipei. Prosecutors barred him from leaving the country after summoning him for questioning last month.
HEALTH
Enterovirus infections surge
A total of 20,776 patients sought outpatient or emergency treatment at hospitals for enterovirus infections across the nation last week, up 7.1 percent from the previous week, the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) said yesterday. CDC Epidemic Intelligence Center director Liu Ting-ping (劉定萍) said enterovirus cases in Taiwan have increased at a slower pace over the past two weeks, with the coxsackie A virus remaining the dominant virus strain circulating around the nation. In terms of the most severe enterovirus 71 (EV71) strain, a total of 45 cases have been confirmed so far this year, including three with severe complications, the CDC said. EV71 is a common cause of hand, foot and mouth disease among infants and children and is associated with fatal neurological illness. The CDC said the current enterovirus epidemic would peak in the middle or late this month.
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