DIPLOMACY
US journalists ‘welcome’
US journalists expelled by China are welcome to set up shop in Taiwan, Minister of Foreign Affairs Joseph Wu (吳釗燮) said yesterday. Beijing ordered the expulsion of 13 journalists from the New York Times, Washington Post and Wall Street Journal earlier this month as part of a spat over media freedoms with the US. Wu said on Twitter that the journalists would be warmly received on the other side of the Taiwan Strait. “I’d like to welcome you to be stationed in Taiwan — a country that is a beacon of freedom and democracy,” Wu wrote. “You’ll find people here greeting you with open arms & lots of genuine smiles.”
WEATHER
Cooler weather forecast
Temperatures today would be similar to yesterday’s throughout Taiwan, but without rain, the Central Weather Bureau said, adding that the weather would gradually become warmer from Tuesday. A front passed through Taiwan and northeasterly winds resulted in a noticeable drop in temperatures yesterday, with lows ranging between 15°C and 19°C across the country and showers or thundershowers in the northern half of Taiwan, the bureau said. Beginning on Wednesday, northeasterly winds and a cloud and moisture system from southern China would approach Taiwan and again reduce temperatures, in particular in northern and eastern Taiwan, the bureau forecast. The cool weather is likely to last through the Tomb Sweeping Day holiday from Thursday to Sunday, it said.
CRIME
Vietnamese escapees caught
Six Vietnamese who escaped from a Taichung facility have been tracked down and arrested, with the case now under investigation, authorities said on Friday. The six were among 31 Vietnamese arrested on a Taiwanese fishing boat in waters off Pingtung County on Saturday last week, the Coast Guard Administration’s Investigation Branch said. Two Taiwanese crew members were also detained by local prosecutors for suspected involvement in people smuggling. After questioning, the Vietnamese were sent to different quarantine facilities in Taichung, but on Monday night, six escaped from the facility where they were being held. On Friday, coast guard investigators said that four of the Vietnamese were tracked down and arrested in Taipei and Taoyuan on Wednesday, while the remaining two were found in Nantou County and Taichung the next day.
CRIME
Ex-judge, son sentenced
The Taipei District Court on Thursday gave a former judge and his son, who were accused of renting a cargo ship to smuggle anthracite from North Korea to Vietnam, suspended sentences for forgery. The court sentenced former judge Chiang Kuo-hua (江國華) to one year in prison, suspended for five years, and fined him NT$1 million (US$33,073) to be paid within four years. His son, Chiang Heng (江衡), received separate sentences of six and seven months, also suspended for five years, and a NT$500,000 fine, while their alleged co-conspirator, surnamed Lu (呂), was sentenced to six months in prison, suspended for four years, with the choice of paying a fine. In 2017, Chiang and his son hired an intermediary to rent a cargo ship, which they loaded with coal at an unnamed North Korean port, investigators said. The pair then turned off the vessel’s tracking device and traveled to Vietnam, where they used a falsified certificate of origin and sailing records to resell the cargo, they said.
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