EDUCATION
NCKU rejects coed dorms
Tainan’s National Cheng Kung University (NCKU) on Thursday said it would not adopt a proposal by a student association member to allow coed rooming for couples in its dormitories. The student association is self-governing, it said, adding that it would not interfere with the proposals put forward by the two candidates competing for its chairmanship. However, even if Cheng Yu-cheng (鄭宇正) wins, his proposal to introduce coed dorms for couples at the university would not be considered, it said. In his campaign, Cheng has also said that the university’s dorm rooms should be more soundproof and the furniture should include love seats. Despite the university’s outright rejection of his proposals for dorm living, the ideas have spurred interest on campus, with some students supporting them and others dismissing them as a publicity stunt.
DRUGS
Malaysian raid nets nine
Nine people allegedly involved in a drug trafficking ring were arrested in Malaysia on Tuesday following a joint effort by Taiwanese and Malaysian law enforcement authorities, the Criminal Investigation Bureau said on Thursday. A cache of drugs with a street value of 2.4 million ringgit (US$545,703) was seized during a raid, it said. The operation was launched after the bureau passed intelligence to Malaysian police that was obtained during the interrogation of a suspect who was arrested last year in connection with a cross-border drug operation. During the raid, law enforcement officers seized 37.5kg of ephedrine, 26,687 ecstasy tablets, 21,396 Erimin tablets, 115g of amphetamine, 60g of marijuana, 44g of ketamine and 2.193kg of “toxic capsules.” The bureau added that Taiwan would continue to strengthen cooperation with other nations to fight 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