CRIME
Fatal DUI driver found guilty
The Taichung District Court yesterday found Yen Tzu-shen (顏子娠), 35, guilty of driving under the influence of alcohol (DUI). Yen ran a red light at about 1am on Nov. 14 and crashed into pastry chef Chen Yu-pang (陳育邦), 32, who was returning home on his scooter. A breath test showed that Yen’s blood alcohol level was 0.46 milligrams per liter (mg/L), well above the legal limit of 0.15mg/L. She later tested positive for ketamine. The case sparked a public furor, as Yen was found to have prior convictions for DUI and taking illegal drugs, had already been sentenced and had her driver’s license suspended. After the crash that killed Chen, Yen drove away in her Mercedes-Benz and tried to cover it up by changing places with a friend. “Yen had accidents before, with drunk driving and taking illegal drugs. This time she was at it again, but it led to a man being killed. Therefore, she had no remorse over her past actions and did not learn from her DUI convictions,” presiding judge Chuang Shen-yuan (莊深淵) said.
ENTERTAINMENT
Zhuzihu festival opens
The Calla Lily Festival at Yangmingshan National Park’s (陽明山國家公園) Zhuzihu area (竹子湖) officially started yesterday, offering visitors views of flower farms, as well as concerts and a farmers’ market. The Taipei Department of Economic Development has organized a number of events for the month-long festival that runs until April 29. The main attraction is touted as “the merging of music concerts with landscape beauty.” Concerts are to take place on Thursday next week, April 14 and April 15 at Taipei’s Daan Forest Park (大安森林公園), with calla lilies being handed out to attendees. The Taipei City Police Department Traffic Division is to impose traffic controls on weekends and holidays in April from 8am to 3pm for those going up the mountain, and from 2pm to 6pm for those going down.
WEATHER
Cold air mass on its way
Taiwan should prepare for changeable weather during the Tomb Sweeping holiday from Wednesday to Sunday next week, as a continental cold air mass could arrive toward the end of the break, the Central Weather Bureau said yesterday. The weather is to be warm and pleasant from today through Thursday next week, with clear to cloudy skies forecast around the nation, the bureau said. However, on Friday next week, the probability of rain could increase and temperatures might fall due to a passing weather front, with strengthening northeasterly winds or a continental cold air mass, the bureau said.
CRIME
Man held for drug smuggling
A Vietnamese worker has been detained for allegedly helping to smuggle marijuana into Taiwan, but he has denied any involvement, aviation police said yesterday. The man was arrested by Taoyuan police officers on Thursday at his company’s dormitory after law enforcement intercepted a package the day before. The package, which arrived at a courier facility at Taiwan Taoyuan International Airport, was said to contain tea leaves, but police and customs officers found it suspicious, said Cheng Chien-tzu (鄭建資), an officer with the Aviation Police Bureau’s Criminal Investigation Brigade. After checking it with an X-ray machine, 130g of marijuana was found concealed inside the tea bags. The police then turned the case over to the Taoyuan District Prosecutors’ Office, which is investigating the man for a possible breach of the Narcotics Hazard Prevention Act (毒品危害防制條例).
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