CRIME
Pork found on boat
About 4kg of pork was seized onboard a Chinese vessel caught on Wednesday illegally fishing in Taiwanese waters, along with its 6,000kg catch, the Coast Guard Administration (CGA) said. The Minjinyu No. 5728 was stopped at about 3am in waters 23.7 nautical miles (43.9km) northwest of Penghu County’s Huayu Islet (花嶼) during an inspection by coast guard personnel, said Hung Po-lun (洪挬論), captain of the CGA Penghu branch. The fishing boat’s crew initially sought to prevent officers from boarding the vessel, so the officers fired into the air after which they were able to board and conduct an inspection, Hung said. The ship was seized and its 15-member crew detained, Hung said, adding that they were fined for illegally fishing in Taiwan’s waters, while the catch was thrown overboard. The pork would be handed over to customs authorities to be destroyed, he said. The spread of African swine fever shows no sign of abating in China.
CUSTOMS
Drug suspects arrested
Five suspects have been arrested in connection with the seizure of nearly 5,000 tablets of the controlled hypnotic drug nimetazepam at Taiwan Taoyuan International Airport in January, airport police said on Wednesday. Airport police and customs personnel on Jan. 8 opened a suspicious air express parcel after an X-ray screening in the express air cargo delivery services area and found 4,938 nimetazepam tablets weighing a combined 1.37kg and estimated to have a street value of NT$1.5 million (US$48,542). Five suspects were arrested in Yilan County, including two minors, who are suspected of posting the package.
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