FISHERIES
Indonesia releases boat
A Taiwanese long-line fishing boat was released and allowed to resume operations early yesterday morning after being searched and detained by the Indonesian Maritime Security Agency near the Strait of Malacca on Friday last week. The boat was released at 5am yesterday after no evidence of illegal activity was found, Representative to Indonesia John Chen (陳忠) said. Taipei Economic and Trade Office in Indonesia officials assisted with the investigation while ensuring the rights of Taiwanese nationals aboard the Kaohsiung-registered Wei Long vessel, Chen said. The Wei Long had received authorization to travel to the Indian Ocean to fish and was making its way there after a pit stop in Singapore when it was detained by Indonesian authorities. Agency officers boarded the ship, which had 29 people on it, including a Taiwanese national in a position of authority and Philippine and Indonesian crew members. Following an inspection of the ship, the agency tugged it to nearby Pulau Karimun Besar, about 30km to 35km west-southwest of Singapore, where it remained until yesterday morning. A woman surnamed Chen (陳), identified as the owner of the boat, said the search was part of a routine inspection by Indonesia, which concluded that there was no evidence of any illegal activity.
SOCIETY
Taipei ranks low in expat pay
Taipei placed ninth from the bottom in the HSBC Expat Explorer survey’s global rankings of expatriate salaries among 52 cities. Expatriates working in Taipei make US$76,788 per year on average, more than those in Buenos Aires; Prague; Manchester, England; Glasgow, Scotland; Barcelona, Spain; Birmingham, England; Brisbane, Australia; and Edinburgh, Scotland, the HSBC survey of 27,587 expatriates from 159 nations and territories showed. A total of 52 cities reached the minimum sample threshold of 90 expatriate respondents and were analyzed separate from their nations. Expatriates who work in Mumbai, India, are the highest-paid in the world, earning an average of US$217,165, more than double the world average of US$99,903, the media reported, citing the HSBC Bank International survey found. Next were expatriates in San Francisco, with an average annual salary of US$207,227, while three other Asian cities — Shanghai (fourth, US$202,211), Jakarta (eighth, US$152,589) and Hong Kong (ninth, US$152,589) — also ranked among the top 10. Edinburgh ranked last with an average expatriate salary of US$56,250 per year, the reports said. The average earnings of expatriates exceeded US$100,000 in 31 cities.
SOCIETY
Black Hawk piece recovered
Debris believed to be from an army UH-60M Black Hawk helicopter that went missing on Feb. 5 near Orchid Island (Lanyu, 蘭嶼) was yesterday found by a Lanyu resident in a coastal area close to Yeyin Village (野銀). Rescue workers have revived plans to find the wreckage. The resident said that he found a piece of metal about 60cm long and 40cm wide washed up on the shore, which according National Airborne Service Corps official Chu Shih-chuan (祝世全) resembles a hydraulic cover plate believed to be from the top of the helicopter’s cockpit. While the debris was found in northern Lanyu, the helicopter disappeared near the south of the island and a signal believed to be from the flight’s black box was also sent from waters south of the island, Chu said. There were six people on board the missing chopper — the pilot, co-pilot, an engineer, a flight nurse, a medical patient and a family member of the patient.
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