SOCIETY
Online gambling ring busted
Six people were arrested in Taoyuan earlier this week in connection with an online gambling operation, the Taoyuan Police Department said yesterday. Acting on a tip-off, police arrested a man suspected of being the group’s leader, as well as five others, the department’s Criminal Investigation Corps said in a statement, without revealing the location. Police said they seized eight computers, two printers, seven mobile phones and other electronic devices. The gambling Web site allowed people to place bets on overseas sporting events, including baseball, basketball and football, as well as play in Hong Kong’s Mark Six lottery, the police said. The gambling ring raked in millions of dollars in illegal profits this year based on the NT$2.2 billion (US$70.1 million) placed in bets, they said. The case has been handed over to the Taoyuan District Prosecutors’ Office.
AGRICULTURE
Rain brings crop losses
Agricultural losses from heavy rain in central and southern Taiwan have reached nearly NT$7 million, the Council of Agriculture reported on Friday. Yunlin County sustained the highest damage at NT$3.56 million, 51 percent of the total, followed by Kaohsiung with NT$1.09 million, Pingtung County with NT$720,000 and Tainan with NT$710,000. Peanuts, bananas, watermelons and corn were the most affected crops, the agency said. As of press time last night, a red alert was in place for 152 rivers and streams — mainly in Nantou, Yunlin, Chiayi and Pingtung counties, as well as Tainan and Kaohsiung — prone to mudslides, as well as a yellow alert for 121 rivers and creeks. The agency warned of heavy downpours on Friday night in those regions and urged local authorities to prepare for possible evacuations.
TRANSPORTATION
Tigerair to gain 15 jetliners
Budget airline Tigerair Taiwan is to lease eight Airbus A320neo jets and buy another seven, which would be delivered from 2021, its parent company, China Airlines (CAL), said on Friday. Following CAL’s own order of 25 A321neo aircraft in May, the carrier said that Tigerair would spend US$729.75 million to acquire the 15 narrow-body airplanes. It is also to also develop new routes to meet growing market demand, CAL said. CAL is scheduled to launch its first-phase initial public offering of Tigerair shares in the fourth quarter of next year, it added. CAL holds a 90 percent stake in Tigerair, with the remaining 10 percent owned by its affiliate, Mandarin Airlines.
SOCIETY
Dice game set to roll
The Kinmen Mid-Autumn Mooncake Dice Game Festival, at which people can win mooncakes and other prizes by winning at dice, is to be held across Taiwan and Penghu County for the first time. From Aug. 31 to Sept. 15, passengers with outbound plane tickets to Kinmen would be eligible to participate in the games simultaneously taking place at Taipei International Airport (Songshan airport), Taichung International Airport, Kaohsiung International Airport, Chiayi Airport, Tainan Airport and Penghu Airport, the Kinmen County Government said. In the game, players are given three chances to roll six dice. If six fours are rolled, they win a bottle of Kinmen kaoliang liquor, the county government said, adding that mooncakes would be given to players who roll a designated number.
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