Taipei City’s Department of Education acknowledged yesterday that a high school failed to respect its female students during a regular health exam program and promised to take disciplinary action against the school’s principal.
Several students at Taipei Municipal Neihu High School complained they felt uncomfortable after being asked by a male doctor to take off their pants for a hernia checkup during a health exam on Monday.
Only male students used to be examined for hernias, but the school included it in the exam for its female students this year on the suggestion of the Taipei City Hospital’s Zhongxiao branch, which conducts the school’s medical check-ups.
School principal Wu Cheng-dong (吳正東) said yesterday the school had failed to notify its female students about the hernia check, and bowed as he apologized for the incident.
“I apologize for not sending notices to students, even though the hernia check was optional. We will explain the issue to parents at a meeting tonight,” he said.
Wu bowed and apologized twice, and said the doctor conducting the exams insisted that female students undergo a hernia check, even though the school’s nurse informed him that it would not be necessary.
Zhongxiao branch director Hong Shih-chi (洪士奇), however, said the doctor had simply been following checkup procedures and had done nothing inappropriate.
“We did not force female students to do the hernia checkup. They could leave the room if they did not want to do it,” Hong said.
“The doctor was just doing his job by performing the checkups,” he said.
Taipei Mayor Hau Lung-bin (郝龍斌) also defended the doctor yesterday, and said the school was at fault because it had failed to ask its female students if they were willing to undergo the hernia exam.
The education department would review the principal’s performance and issue punishment if necessary, Hau said.
The military has spotted two Chinese warships operating in waters near Penghu County in the Taiwan Strait and sent its own naval and air forces to monitor the vessels, the Ministry of National Defense (MND) said. Beijing sends warships and warplanes into the waters and skies around Taiwan on an almost daily basis, drawing condemnation from Taipei. While the ministry offers daily updates on the locations of Chinese military aircraft, it only rarely gives details of where Chinese warships are operating, generally only when it detects aircraft carriers, as happened last week. A Chinese destroyer and a frigate entered waters to the southwest
A magnitude 6.1 earthquake struck off the coast of Yilan County at 8:39pm tonight, the Central Weather Administration (CWA) said, with no immediate reports of damage or injuries. The epicenter was 38.7km east-northeast of Yilan County Hall at a focal depth of 98.3km, the CWA’s Seismological Center said. The quake’s maximum intensity, which gauges the actual physical effect of a seismic event, was a level 4 on Taiwan’s 7-tier intensity scale, the center said. That intensity level was recorded in Yilan County’s Nanao Township (南澳), Hsinchu County’s Guansi Township (關西), Nantou County’s Hehuanshan (合歡山) and Hualien County’s Yanliao (鹽寮). An intensity of 3 was
Instead of focusing solely on the threat of a full-scale military invasion, the US and its allies must prepare for a potential Chinese “quarantine” of Taiwan enforced through customs inspections, Stanford University Hoover fellow Eyck Freymann said in a Foreign Affairs article published on Wednesday. China could use various “gray zone” tactics in “reconfiguring the regional and ultimately the global economic order without a war,” said Freymann, who is also a nonresident research fellow at the US Naval War College. China might seize control of Taiwan’s links to the outside world by requiring all flights and ships entering or leaving Taiwan
The next minimum wage hike is expected to exceed NT$30,000, President William Lai (賴清德) said yesterday during an award ceremony honoring “model workers,” including migrant workers, at the Presidential Office ahead of Workers’ Day today. Lai said he wished to thank the awardees on behalf of the nation and extend his most sincere respect for their hard work, on which Taiwan’s prosperity has been built. Lai specifically thanked 10 migrant workers selected for the award, saying that although they left their home countries to further their own goals, their efforts have benefited Taiwan as well. The nation’s industrial sector and small businesses lay
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