POLITICS
Ma travel ban denied
The Taiwan High Court yesterday rejected Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) caucus whip Ker Chien-ming’s (柯建銘) appeal against a lower court’s decision denying his request to have former president Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九) barred from leaving the country. It was the final ruling on the case, meaning Ker cannot file any more appeals. The Taipei District Court first ruled against Ker’s request on April 29. Ker then appealed to the Taiwan High Court, which revoked the lower court’s finding on May 19 and returned the case to the district court for consideration. In a statement on its June 13 ruling, the district court said that while Ker said Ma might flee the nation because most of his family members hold US citizenship and live overseas, and Ma might have a US green card, that was only speculation not supported by evidence. Ker, who has accused Ma of leaking confidential information obtained from former state prosecutor-general Huang Shih-ming (黃世銘) in 2013, first asked the district court in March to bar Ma from leaving the nation on the grounds that he was a flight risk.
WEATHER
Temperature hits new high
Temperatures in Taipei soared to 37.1oC around noon yesterday, unusually high for June, the Central Weather Bureau reported. However, it was the eighth time so far this month that Taipei recorded a temperature of 37oC or higher, a new record, the weather bureau said. The scorching temperatures in northern Taiwan were due to a high-pressure system in the Pacific Ocean, the bureau said. The weather monitoring station in New Taipei City’s Banciao District (板橋) recorded a temperature of 35.7oC at noon yesterday, while the mercury hit 35.5oC in Taichung and 35.2oC in Chiayi County.
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