WEATHER
Cold front assails north
The weather was turning wet and cold yesterday due to strengthening seasonal northeasterly winds and the arrival of the strongest cold front so far this autumn, the Central Weather Bureau said. Taiwan’s north and east, in particular, experienced downpours and a prolonged period of rain, it said, adding that as the cold air gradually moves southward, temperatures in the north were forecast to fall further to between 15°C and 17°C today. Meanwhile, bureau data showed that a tropical depression near the Spratly Islands (Nansha Islands, 南沙群島) in the South China Sea yesterday morning strengthened into a tropical storm, which has been named Kirogi. The storm is expected to head toward the Indochinese Peninsula and should not affect Taiwan, the bureau said.
DEFENSE
Firms bid to locate black box
The air force has released a formal request for tender (RFT) by companies to conduct a marine salvage mission to retrieve the flight recorder of the Mirage-2000 fighter jet that went missing on Nov. 7. According to an air force official, who wished to remain anonymous, the RFT, which was published earlier this week, has attracted bids from more than five companies, all of which are able to locate and retrieve the black box from a depth of 100m. The air force is to review the bids tomorrow and if all goes well, the contract will be awarded and a company will proceed with salvage work, weather conditions permitting, the source said. It has been 12 days since the Mirage-2000 piloted by Captain Ho Tzu-yu (何子雨) went missing off the northeast coast. Since then, the air force has detected and located a signal matching that sent out by Mirage-2000 black boxes about 145km north by northeast of Keelung, but has not found the aircraft.
CRIME
People charged with logging
The Nantou District Prosecutors’ Office on Friday charged 21 people with involvement in an illegal logging operation. Chief prosecutor Wu Yi-ying (吳怡盈) said 13 Taiwanese and eight foreign nationals have been charged with illegal logging, transporting the timber and processing it into works of art for sale. Among those indicted is a man believed to be the mastermind of the operation, surnamed Chou (周), who recruited members to the group and committed offenses throughout Taiwan since the beginning of the year, Wu said. Chou’s group allegedly engaged in 22 cases of illegal logging and related commercial activities from January to June. Police last month conducted a raid on the group’s operations, seizing 315 items, including logs and works of art, weighing a total of 5.189 tonnes and worth NT$50 million (US$1.66 million).
EDUCATION
NTUST ranks 65th for jobs
UK magazine Times Higher Education on Thursday included four of the nation’s universities in this year’s Global University Employability Ranking, which assesses how well universities prepare students for the workplace, with National Taiwan University of Science and Technology (NTUST) leading the pack, ranking 65th out of 150 academic institutions worldwide. The annual survey solicits opinions from human resources executives. NTUST moved up eight places from last year. National Taiwan University moved up five places from last year to 122nd place. National Tsing Hua University climbed five places as well, to 136th. National Chiao Tung University, which was not included in last year’s list, this year made it to 144th place on the list.
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