CRIME
Heroin seized at airport
About 2.2kg of heroin was found in an imported hot dog machine at the Taiwan Taoyuan International Airport on Friday, the Aviation Police Bureau and Customs Administration said yesterday. The heroin, worth more than NT$10 million (US$324,717), was in six bags in the package, authorities said. Police would not reveal the origin of the package. Police tracked down the recipient of the package, a man surnamed Wu (吳), in Kaohsiung. Wu has been referred to the Taoyuan District Prosecutors’ Office in terms of the Narcotics Hazard Prevention Act (毒品危害防制條例).
DIPLOMACY
Suspects going to China
The Ministry of Foreign Affairs yesterday expressed regret at a plan by Spain to deport a group of Taiwanese telecom fraud suspects to China. In a Cabinet meeting on Friday, the Spanish government accepted Beijing’s request to extradite 269 Taiwanese and Chinese arrested in Spain for their suspected involvement in telecom fraud, the ministry said. The decision has infringed upon the rights of the Taiwanese suspects and defies the European tradition of humanism, the ministry said. The suspects were arrested in December last year in a joint operation between Spain and China, and more than 200 of the 269 suspects are Taiwanese, the ministry said. The government has been negotiating with Spain in the past two months in the hope that the Taiwanese suspects could be extradited to Taiwan, but Spain did not reply to the request, the ministry said.
ENTERTAINMENT
Lantern festival to stay lit
Yunlin County’s Beigang Township (北港) lantern display is to continue until April 19, despite the end of the 2017 Taiwan Lantern Festival today, Beigang Township Mayor Chang Sheng-chih (張勝智) said yesterday. The county government decided that all lanterns on display in Beigang will be preserved, Chang said, adding that extending the display will allow visitors to take part in annual events celebrating the birthday of the sea goddess Matsu at Beigang’s Chaotian Temple. Matsu’s birthday falls on April 19 this year. This year’s lantern festival was held in two areas in Yunlin — at the main venue in Huwei Township (虎尾) from Sunday last week to today and in Beigang from Feb. 7 to today. The county government said that the lantern display in Huwei could be extended due to contract restrictions and a workforce shortage.
CRIME
Suspected fraudsters nabbed
Eight suspects were arrested in connection with alleged telecom fraud in which a Chinese professor was swindled out of more than 18 million yuan (US$2.62 million), Taichung police said on Thursday. Police said the 54-year-old professor, identified only by her surname, Huang (黃), was targeted by the suspects in July last year. The alleged mastermind behind the group, surnamed Liu (劉), and his accomplices posed as the prosecutor-general of the Chinese Supreme People’s Procuratorate, the highest national agency responsible for investigation and prosecution in China. Police said some of the money was withdrawn using ATMs in Taiwan, while the remainder was transferred online, with the address linked to Taiwan. China solicited Taiwan’s assistance in tracking down the fraud ring in accordance with a cross-strait agreement on judicial assistance and combating crime.
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