EDUCATION
Drug problems identified
Drug abuse on Taipei campuses tends to be at its most problematic at 10 senior-high and vocational schools, the Taipei City Police Department said in an analysis released yesterday. The department’s Drug Enforcement Center said its analysis of students involved in drug cases at elementary, junior, senior-high and vocational schools in the city over the past three years found that senior-high and vocational students accounted for 80 percent of the cases and that 80 percent of individuals were students at just 10 schools. The department has been working with the Taipei Department of Education to boost anti-drug campaigns in those schools and to track down those responsible for providing drugs to students.
DIPLOMACY
Tseng to get EU posting
National Security Council Deputy Secretary-General Harry Tseng (曾厚仁) yesterday confirmed that he is to become representative to the EU and Belgium. Tseng has served as ambassador to Palau and representative to Ireland. He served as deputy secretary-general of the Presidential Office for about three months last year, serving as a key aide on President Tsai Ing-wen’s (蔡英文) trips overseas before being named to the council post in August last year. Tseng is to fill the vacancy left by Tung Kuo-yu (董國猷), whose application to retire was granted by the Presidential Office. A Presidential Office source said relations between Taiwan and the EU have recently become closer, and visits by EU politicians have doubled since the second half of last year.
CRIME
Smuggling suspect nabbed
A suspect in the smuggling of 287 cans of an alcoholic drink seized in October last year that were later found to contain the synthetic drug GHB (gamma hydroxybutyric acid) was detained on Monday and is being held incommunicado, the Kinmen District Prosecutors’ Office said yesterday. The office received a tip-off about organized crime groups using direct ferry links between Kinmen and Xiamen, China, to smuggle cans of US-made Four Loko, which are fruit-flavored alcoholic drinks. The tip said that a Taiwanese man, surnamed Lin (林), was trying to smuggle cans of Four Loko into Kinmen on Chinese ships. The cans were confiscated during a raid at Liaolo Harbor wharf. Police arrested Lin on Monday as he was trying to flee to Kaohsiung. A search of his home reportedly turned up 3g of amphetamines, an amphetamine-detection device, checkbooks, knives, model guns and two bullets. Prosecutors have applied to the Kinmen District Court to hold Lin for suspected violations of the Controlling Guns, Ammunition and Knives Act (槍砲彈藥刀械管制條例) and the Narcotics Hazard Prevention Act (毒品危害防治條例).
ENVIRONMENT
Legal amendments planned
The government is planning amendments to environmental laws to increase the penalty on environmental crimes, Minister of Justice Chiu Tai-san (邱太三) said on Monday. Environmental recovery costs would be treated as illicit gains that should be recovered from offenders, he said. Chiu said that many cleanup efforts require the government to spend from NT$10 million to NT$20 million (US$328,321 to US$656,642). The planned amendments would require alleged offenders to prove that their actions were not harmful to the public. The proposed law would also give environmental, forestry and food safety officials the power to investigate and collect evidence, he added.
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