SOCIETY
Trekker returns home alone
A Taiwanese trekker who went missing for 47 days in the Himalayas and saw his girlfriend die there returned to Taiwan yesterday after recovering in a hospital in Nepal. Liang Sheng-yue (梁聖岳) appeared weak and tired on arrival at Taiwan Taoyuan International Airport and did not respond to reporters’ questions. The 21-year-old and his girlfriend, Liu Chen-chun (劉宸君), 18, arrived in Nepal from India in late February and began their trek in early March. According to Liang, the couple encountered heavy snow on the third day of their journey and they fell off a cliff while trying to get down the mountain to find shelter. They stayed in a cave to wait for assistance. However, their food only lasted for two weeks, after which they had only salt and water. Liu died three days before Liang was found on Wednesday last week by a team of experienced rescuers, who spotted vultures circling above the cave where the couple took refuge.
LABOR
Security guards to get older
A legislative committee on Monday approved a draft amendment that would allow security providers to hire guards up to the age of 70. The proposal, passed by the legislature’s Internal Administration Committee, also retained a clause requiring private security guards and other security personnel to be at least 20. The existing law does not allow private security guards to work beyond 65. Committee convener William Tseng (曾銘宗) of the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) had proposed that those aged 18 to 70 be able to work as security guards, but KMT Legislator Huang Chao-shun (黃昭順) said it would not be safe to have teenagers working as security guards in residential and office buildings or at construction sites. Huang’s concerns were accepted.
ENTERTAINMENT
Britney Spears to play gig
US pop singer Britney Spears, who rose to international stardom in the late 1990s and has sold about 100 million records worldwide, is to hold her first-ever concert in Taiwan next month, a promoter said. The concert “Britney Live in Taipei 2017” is to take place at the Taipei Nangang Exhibition Center on June 13, with tickets to go on sale on Saturday next week, IMEtw announced yesterday. Seated tickets are to cost NT$2,680 to NT$7,680 and standing tickets are to cost NT$1,680, the promoter said. In a career spanning almost two decades, the 35-year-old has released nine studio albums.
SOCIETY
Marathon club charged
The owner and an employee of a marathon club have been indicted on charges of falsifying documents to bring Kenyan runners into the nation, the Tainan District Prosecutors’ Office said on Monday. The club was involved in falsifying invitation letters from a well-established sportswear brand so that the Kenyans could successfully apply for Taiwanese visas, Tainan Chief Prosecutor Chen Chien-hung (陳建弘) said. The club owner and the employee, identified only as Lin (林) and Lu (盧), were found to have invited more than 10 Kenyan athletes to Taiwan between December 2015 and August last year to compete in marathons. Acting on tips provided by the National Immigration Agency, police raided the club and found evidence of falsified documents and account books. The two would also take a cut from the Kenyan runners’ winnings in the races, and they profited by NT$600,000 (US$19,959) from a total of NT$6 million to NT$7 million in prize money during this period, prosecutors alleged.
AGENCIES
FLU SEASON: Twenty-six severe cases were reported from Tuesday last week to Monday, including a seven-year-old girl diagnosed with influenza-associated encephalopathy Nearly 140,000 people sought medical assistance for diarrhea last week, the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) said on Tuesday. From April 7 to Saturday last week, 139,848 people sought medical help for diarrhea-related illness, a 15.7 percent increase from last week’s 120,868 reports, CDC Epidemic Intelligence Center Deputy Director Lee Chia-lin (李佳琳) said. The number of people who reported diarrhea-related illness last week was the fourth highest in the same time period over the past decade, Lee said. Over the past four weeks, 203 mass illness cases had been reported, nearly four times higher than the 54 cases documented in the same period
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:
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
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