WEATHER
Storm likely to pass by
Tropical storm Tokage, which is hovering over waters west of the Philippines, is not likely to hit Taiwan, although the moist air in its outer periphery is affecting Taiwan, the Central Weather Bureau said yesterday as it released heavy rain advisories. The bureau said the storm’s periphery, combined with seasonal northeasterly winds, would bring about an 80 percent chance of rain throughout the nation yesterday, with Keelung, mountainous parts of New Taipei City, eastern Taiwan and the Hengchun Peninsula (恆春半島) in the south expected to see heavy rain. Daniel Wu (吳德榮), a meteorologist and adjunct associate professor of atmospheric sciences at National Central University, predicted Tokage would soon weaken, but that a new storm is likely to form in the coming week.
CRIME
Taiwanese finish jail terms
Thirty-four Taiwanese have been deported from Thailand, after serving two years in jail for their involvement in telecoms fraud in Chiang Mai, Thailand, officials said. The Taiwanese — 32 men and two women — recently completed their two-year sentences in Chiang Mai Province, after being convicted of engaging in telecoms fraud in a rural part of the province, Thai police said. The deportees were taken to Bangkok, handed over to Taiwanese police at the airport and put on a plane to Taiwan, Taiwan’s representative office in Thailand said. In recent years, there have been a number of cases in which Taiwanese have been arrested on charges of fraud in Southeast Asian countries, including Malaysia, Thailand, Cambodia and the Philippines. Some of those arrested have been deported to China at the insistence of Beijing.
CRIME
Principal, wife sentenced
The Yunlin District Court on Wednesday sentenced a former vocational high-school principal and her husband to jail terms of four years and eight months, and five years and two months,, respectively for taking kickbacks from lunch providers totaling NT$38 million (US$1.15 million). Chen Hsiu-chuan (陳秀娟) and her husband, Huang Shu-yao (黃曙曜), were charged with taking kickbacks ranging from NT$4 to NT$9 for each of lunch box supplied to students at Da-Cheng Vocational High School in Huwei Township (虎尾) from September 2005 to May last year. The couple were also charged with taking NT$1.4 million in illicit profits from renting the school’s storage house to breakfast vendors between June 2008 and December 2009. The court also ruled that the couple must pay fines totaling NT$28.4 million, in addition to serving time in jail.
ENTERTAINMENT
Taiwanese drama in Spanish
A Taiwanese television drama, The Way We Were (16個夏天), is to be broadcast in Spanish in El Salvador on Sunday, according to Taiwan’s embassy in the Central American nation. Airing the series abroad is part of the government’s efforts to promote Taiwan’s TV industry and introduce Taiwanese culture and people to foreign allies, Taiwan’s Ambassador to El Salvador Florencia Hsieh (謝妙宏) said. The series, produced in 2014 with Ministry of Culture and Ministry of Foreign Affairs sponsorship, won awards for best supporting actress, best director and best television series at the Golden Bell Awards last year. It has been broadcast in Spanish since August in 10 Latin American nations as part of efforts to promote cultural exchanges between Taiwan and those nations, the embassy 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