SOCIETY
Winning number announced
Holders of 17 receipts with the winning number 82885130 are each entitled to claim a NT$10 million (US$329,641) special prize in the January-February uniform invoice lottery, the Ministry of Finance said on Thursday. One winner spent NT$4 on gasoline at a self-service pump in Taichung, the ministry said, adding that another winning invoice was for NT$8 spent on photocopies of documents at a convenience store in Changhua County. The largest invoice among the 17 winners was for NT$1,580 spent on an online purchase of an appliance, it said. The number of special-prize-winning receipts for January-February was the largest in the history of the uniform invoice lottery, the ministry said. However, the actual prize would be about NT$8 million after taxes. Holders of winning receipts can claim their prize money from Thursday next week, the ministry said.
MILITARY
Taiping drills a legal right
The government has the right to conduct exercises on Itu Aba Island (Taiping Island, 太平島) in the South China Sea, an indivisible part of the nation’s territory, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs said on Thursday. The ministry made the statement after a routine drill — conducted by the Coast Guard Administration on Itu Aba from 8am to 9pm daily from Wednesday to yesterday — drew a protest from Vietnam. The ministry said that the Republic of China has irrefutable rights over islands in the South China Sea and their waters based on international and maritime laws. The government is willing to work with relevant countries to promote peace and stability in the South China Sea, based on the principles of putting aside disputes, jointly developing resources and negotiating on an equal footing, an official 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
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