ENTERTAINMENT
Mahjong tourney announced
Kaohsiung is to host a national leisure mahjong competition in December, Department of Tourism Director Peter Pan (潘恆旭) said yesterday. “Leisure mahjong” refers to playing for fun or with small bets. A supporter of Kaohsiung Mayor Han Kuo-yu (韓國瑜) came up with the idea, Pan said, adding that the competition would help the city’s tourism industry. The top three finishers would be awarded shopping money, as the event is to take place just before the Lunar New Year, Pan said. Debate has surfaced since Han on Wednesday said that he has not played mahjong since assuming office on Dec. 25 last year. Democratic Progressive Party Kaohsiung City Councilor Lin Chih-hung (林智鴻) on Thursday released a photograph showing Han playing mahjong over the Lunar New Year holiday with his family in Bali, Indonesia.
SOCIETY
Minor injuries in collision
Nearly two dozen people sustained minor injuries when their high-school bus crashed into the back of a moving container truck on Sun Yat-sen Freeway (Freeway No. 1) yesterday, the Taoyuan Fire Department said. The accident took place at 5:09pm on the northbound lane near Jhongli District (中壢), it said, adding that the driver and 22 students from a local school sustained minor cuts and bruises. Two other vehicles also rear-ended the vehicles in front of them due to the accident, the National Highway Police Bureau said. The drivers of those vehicles only had minor injuries and traffic returned to normal at 6:13pm, the bureau said. Police said they are investigating the cause of the accident.
CRIME
Man charged with murder
Prosecutors are seeking “severe punishment” for a Vietnamese worker who displayed no remorse after being accused of killing his girlfriend, the Yunlin District Prosecutors’ Office said on Thursday. The worker, identified as Do, 34, was charged with killing his 37-year-old Vietnamese girlfriend in June during an argument over debt, chief prosecutor Huang Yi-hua (黃怡華) said. Do allegedly asked his girlfriend, a taxi driver, to return money she owed him as they sat in her car in Mailiao Township (麥寮), Huang said. Do then allegedly stabbed the woman in the neck and chest in front of her 11-year-old son, who fled the scene, Huang said. He then put her body in the trunk and drove to a drainage channel, where he disposed of the remains, Huang said. As Do displayed no remorse, prosecutors decided to charge him with murder and disposal of a body, Huang added.
CRIME
Cheng I ordered to pay
The Taiwan High Court on Tuesday ruled that Cheng I Food Co (正義食品) and its former president, Ho Yu-jen (何育仁), must pay 19 customers a combined NT$95,000 for selling tainted oil. The case dates back to April 2015, when the Consumers’ Foundation filed a class-action lawsuit on behalf of hundreds of consumers against Cheng I and three other producers of tainted edible oils, among others. In August 2017, the Taipei District Court ruled that Ho and Cheng I must pay a combined NT$405,000 to 257 affected consumers. Cheng I and the foundation both appealed the ruling. Of the affected consumers, 233 reached a settlement with the oil producer, while five provided insufficient evidence to back up their claims, the High Court said. Each of the remaining 19 customers are to receive compensation of NT$5,000, the verdict said. The case can be appealed.
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