DEFENSE
Chinese naval ship spotted
A Chinese naval reconnaissance vessel was spotted off Hualien County early yesterday morning, ahead of the start of the annual live-fire Han Kuang military exercises on Monday, an anonymous military source said. The Chinese vessel was spotted 44 nautical miles (81.5km) off Fengbin Township (豐濱) at about 4am, sailing in a southeasterly direction until it went out of monitoring range, the source said. Chinese reconnaissance and intelligence vessels had been spotted in the area before live-fire drills in previous years, they added. Ministry of National Defense spokesman Sun Li-fang (孫立方) said the ministry was looking into the matter. The drills starting on Monday are to include large-scale joint naval and air drills off Yilan County’s Suao Township (蘇澳).
EDUCATION
Amendment targets abuse
The Cabinet on Thursday approved a draft amendment aiming to weed out public school employees convicted of sexual assault, corruption or national security-related offenses. The amendment to the Act Governing the Appointment of Educators (教育人員任用條例) stipulates that educators who have hidden previous sexual assault convictions and commit further offenses on campus could be dismissed without authorization by the authorities. Previous convictions would under certain circumstances permanently disqualify educators from positions at public schools. The bill would apply to principals, teachers, staffers and sports coaches at public schools; researchers at government-affiliated institutions; and personnel at social education institutions. Personnel would be suspended from their duties for one to four years if they are found guilty of sexual harassment, bullying or causing mental or physical suffering to students through the use of corporal punishment.
CULTURE
Bookstore to get overhaul
Renovation work on Taiwan’s oldest Chinese-language bookstore began on Thursday, funded by the Keelung Cultural Affairs Bureau. Renovation of the 75-year-old bookstore is expected to take one year, the bureau said. To help save the local heritage site, bureau Director-General Chen Ching-ping (陳靜萍) said the bureau secured funding of NT$3.58 million (US$119,668) from the Ministry of Culture. The Tzu Li Bookstore (自立書店) was founded by Chen Shang-hui (陳上惠) in April 1947, the bureau said. Chen Shang-hui, who passed away in January last year at the age of 103, in 1945 became aware that local stores only sold books in Japanese after Tokyo’s colonial rule ended in October that year, the bureau said. He then started importing books from China to sell them in his newly opened store, it added.
SOCIETY
Ports upgraded for migrants
Most fishing ports have been equipped with washrooms and prayer rooms for foreign fishing crew members so that 59 percent of Taiwan’s 6,895 foreign crew members now have access to such facilities, the Fisheries Agency said on Wednesday. The agency started a program to set up the facilities in 2020. As of June 30, 29 washrooms with hot water systems had been set up at fishing ports, agency Director-General Chang Chih-sheng (張致盛) said, adding that three more would be completed in the second half of this year, as the agency seeks to increase the coverage rate to 90 percent. As most crew members are Muslims, 14 prayer rooms had also been set up, Chang said. The agency also expanded its online portal for foreign fishers, offering services in Chinese, English, Indonesian, Filipino and Vietnamese.
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