CRIME
Taiwanese held in Vietnam
Eight fraud suspects, including three Taiwanese, were on Saturday detained in Vietnam for alleged involvement in online telecommunications scams, Vietnamese media reported yesterday. The identities of the three Taiwanese suspects have yet to be made public, local media reported. Members of the fraud ring have swindled 10 billion dong (US$440,000) from Vietnamese since February by posing as Vietnamese government officials, the reports said. Vietnamese police have stepped up their investigation of the case, suspecting that the detained suspects might be part of a bigger cross-border fraud ring active in the country.
SOCIETY
Famous hair stylist dies
A renowned Hong Kong hair stylist and long-time Taiwan resident was late on Friday evening found dead in his Taipei apartment, possibly due to asphyxiation, police said on Saturday. The man, former L’Oreal executive Enzo Leung (梁家譽), was discovered unconscious at about 10pm on Friday by the building’s security guard, who immediately called for an ambulance, police said. City firefighters, who were the first to arrive on the scene with emergency rescuers, found Leung without any sign of life, police said. Empty liquor bottles were found scattered around the apartment, with Leung lying in a pool of his own vomit in the bathroom, they said. There appeared not to be any signs of exterior wounds, they said, adding that the coroner would conduct an autopsy to determine the cause of death, although initial findings suggested that he probably choked to death. The police said they have ruled out murder.
TRAFFIC ACCIDENTS
Seniors in most A1 crashes
Drivers older than 70 accounted for the most immediately fatal traffic accidents last year, data released on Saturday by the National Police Agency (NPA) showed. There were a total of 1,434 cases of type A1 accidents, or ones that resulted in death within 24 hours, the NPA said. People aged 70 or older who were driving in those accidents accounted on average for 9.7 cases out of 100,000 people, followed by those aged 18 to 29, who accounted for 8.08 cases per 100,000 people, the data showed. The main causes of type A1 accidents for people aged 70 and older were, in descending order, failure to yield, not observing traffic signs, inappropriate turns and a failure on the part of the passenger or the pedestrian.
TECHNOLOGY
Taichung to host Robo Cup
The Federation of International Robot Soccer Associations (FIRA) has decided to organize its Robo World Cup in Taichung from Aug. 6 to Aug. 11, after a location in Denmark turned out to be double-booked. Minister of Science and Technology Chen Liang-gee (陳良基) said he hopes that the tournament will show the world Taiwan’s skills in robotics. The competition is to feature robots with artificial intelligence from countries including Taiwan, Germany, the US, China, Japan and South Korea. They are to compete in a range of tournaments, including three-on-three matches for humanoid robots and two-on-two games for wheeled robots, the event’s organizers said. While robots lack the speed and mobility of human soccer players, what makes such matches interesting is how robots use artificial intelligence and big data analysis to determine how to move and win, Chen said. Last year’s world cup took place in Kaohsiung.
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