CRIME
Briton caught drunk driving
A Kaohsiung-based Briton who grabbed headlines after tattooing the Chinese characters for “Taiwan” on his forehead was yesterday detained for drunk driving. Police in the city’s Yangcheng Precinct stopped him on Cisian 2nd Road as he was seen riding a motorcycle apparently under the influence and parked the scooter beyond the stop line when waiting for a traffic light. Police said he smelt of alcohol and a test showed a breath alcohol level of 0.82 milligrams per liter, far exceeding the minimum level of 0.15 milligrams per liter. Police recognized the man immediately and charged him with offenses against public safety, transferring the case to prosecutors. Prosecutors later released the man without posting bail after questioning. He was upset when being detained and damaged the toilet of the detention room, refusing to be questioned for some time, police said. The man relocated to Taiwan 12 years ago and was naturalized six years ago after marrying a Taiwanese woman. He runs a pub in the city’s Yangcheng District (鹽埕), and has a history of drunk driving and arson.
ECONOMY
‘Shortages’ to be addressed
The Cabinet is to propose a policy package to solve the “five industrial shortages” in two weeks, Premier William Lai (賴清德) said yesterday. The Executive Yuan has been drafting proposals to alleviate shortages of power, water, land, labor and skilled workers, and the premier would personally chair a news conference in about two weeks to announce the proposals, after the Legislative Yuan has finished a review of the policy implementation framework submitted by the Cabinet, Lai said. It has been one of the Cabinet’s top priorities to solve the “five shortages” to revive the economy, and possible solutions include tax reduction, he said. Lai reiterated the Cabinet’s determination to boost the economy as he thanked the public for his high approval rating.
LABOR
Overtime pay rises 7.41%
The average overtime pay between January and August this year was NT$1,697 per employee, a 7.41 percent increase from last year and the highest increase in the same period in seven years, the Directorate-General of Budget, Accounting and Statistics (DGBAS) said yesterday. Average hourly overtime pay was NT$212, a record. Average monthly overtime hours between January and August fell 0.2 hours to eight from the same period last year. The increase in remuneration is mainly due to a legal requirement for employers to pay higher overtime pay if they ask employees to work on holidays, DGBAS Census Department Deputy Director Pan Ning-hsin (潘寧馨) said.
IMMIGRATION
Yunlin opens migrant center
The Yunlin County Government has set up a service center to enhance communication between immigrant workers and their employers, as about 18,000 foreign workers work in the county’s industrial and social welfare sectors. The center is tasked with helping contract workers from foreign countries to adapt to the nation’s life, culture, customs and laws. It is to organize workshops for employers, workers and labor brokers to give information on the laws and regulations governing labor-management relations, insurance, work contracts and wages. The center is also to organize activities to promote cultural exchanges and hold language courses for both local employers and their foreign workers.
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