SOCIETY
NT$19 snack wins millions
A NT$19 (US$0.65) receipt for a snack food product is one of the lucky winners of a NT$10 million special prize in the latest uniform invoice lottery, the 7-Eleven convenience store chain said yesterday. The Ministry of Finance on Sunday announced the winning numbers for the January-February uniform invoice lottery. One customer won the special prize after purchasing a NT$19 snack at a 7-Eleven outlet in Banciao District (板橋), New Taipei City, the chain said in a statement. The winning number for the special prize is 21735266. Every uniform invoice with that number receives a special prize of NT$10 million. Supermarket chain Pxmart and convenience store chain Family Mart said they had also each issued an invoice that won a NT$10 million special prize.
FOREIGN AFFAIRS
Tsai meets foreign official
President Tsai Ing-wen (蔡英文) yesterday met Guatemalan Minister of Foreign Affairs Sandra Jovel and said she hopes that bilateral exchanges could deepen the friendship between the two nations. Tsai commended Jovel, who assumed her post in August last year, for her contributions to enhance relations between the two nations, and said she hopes the minister would continue her support for Taiwan. Tsai said the two nations have been friends for 85 years and cooperate closely on healthcare, agricultural techniques and technology, and infrastructure development. Jovel is leading a five-member delegation to Taiwan until tomorrow. Also yesterday, Minister of Foreign Affairs Joseph Wu (吳釗燮) conferred a medal on behalf of the government on his Guatemalan counterpart in recognition of her support for Taiwan in the international arena, a statement issued by the ministry said.
POLITICS
Ma gets travel permit
The Presidential Office has approved an application by former president Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九) to travel to the US next month, office spokesman Sidney Lin (林鶴明) said on Sunday. Ma intends to visit the US from April 9 to 13, during which he is to give a speech at Stanford University, Lin said, adding that Ma’s application was reviewed based on the Classified National Security Information Protection Act (國家機密保護法) and regulations governing restrictions by the Presidential Office on overseas travel by those involved in national secrets. It would be the fourth time Ma is to travel abroad since he stepped down in May 2016 after completing his second term in office. Ma flew to Malaysia in November 2016, and in February last year visited New York, Boston and Washington at the invitation of several US think tanks and academic organizations.
CRIME
Man arrested for extortion
Police on Sunday arrested a man in Taichung for allegedly attempting to extort money from the Chiayi City police earlier in the day with a bomb threat. The man, identified only by his surname, Wang, telephoned the bureau at about 2pm claiming he had placed a bomb in a women’s bathroom at the Chiayi high-speed railway station. Chiayi police said Wang demanded that the bureau pay him NT$1 million or he would detonate the bomb. After tracing the call to a hotel in Taichung, Chiayi police went to Taichung and contacted the local police. They arrested the 39-year-old at the hotel and took him back to Chiayi. They also checked to see if there was a bomb in one of the railway station’s restrooms, but did not find anything suspicious.
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