■CRIME
Alleged fraudsters nabbed
Police yesterday arrested two alleged members of a crime ring that disguises numbers of incoming phone calls. Members of the National Police Agency (NPA) and the Criminal Investigation Bureau (CIB) accompanied Kaohsiung district prosecutors yesterday to make the arrests in Fengshan (鳳山市), Kaohsiung County. The pair were arrested in connection with operating computer equipment to assist fraudsters making calls, police chief Shen Chien-ren (沈建仁) said. The equipment can falsify phone numbers to simulate a fake number when the receiver sees the caller ID. It can also change the serial numbers of cellphone SIM cards to prevent investigators from tracking them. Police say this is the first time such equipment has been confiscated in Taiwan. Fraudsters typically instruct people to withdraw money from an ATM or fill out forms at a bank to transfer money to criminals’ bank accounts. Those who have received suspicious phone calls should verify the validity of the caller by calling back to see if the number reached the same caller, police said. People receiving fraudulent phone calls can report them by dialing the toll-free number 165.
■HEALTH
Physician’s Act amended
A Cabinet meeting yesterday approved an amendment to the Physician’s Act (醫師法) setting new conditions for individuals obtaining medical degrees abroad to practice medicine in Taiwan. Graduates from foreign medical schools will not be allowed to sit qualification examinations in Taiwan unless their degree certificates are authenticated by the Ministry of Education and they have successfully completed an internship. The amendment comes after a demonstration by medical students on Sunday that called on the government to address the problem of increasing numbers of students seeking medical degrees in eastern European countries that became members of the EU in recent years. In Taiwan, medical students must complete a seven-year course and a two-year internship before qualifying for license exams, while a medical student in Poland, for example, only needs to study for four years and is not required to do an internship.
■HEALTH
Two more H1N1 cases
The Central Epidemics Command Centers (CECC) yesterday announced another two confirmed swine flu cases, bringing the nation’s total of confirmed cases to 16. Both had recently returned from New York. CECC spokesman Shih Wen-yi (施文儀) said one was a 25-year-old graduate student who arrived in Taiwan on May 29. The other case is a 24-year-old businessman based in Manhattan. He arrived in Taiwan on Monday.
■HEALTH
Minister wants screening
Department of Health (DOH) Minister Yeh Ching-chuan (葉金川) said yesterday that Taiwan should retain its policy of screening new migrant workers for hepatitis B, given that most work in close contact with their employers. Yeh was referring to a recent decision by the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) to revoke the policy of testing workers for hepatitis B on arrival in Taiwan. The center revoked the regulation based on the consideration that the disease can only be transmitted via blood or body fluids. Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) Legislator Hou Tsai-feng (侯彩鳳) said the cancelation of hepatitis B testing of new migrant workers would put the country’s citizens at risk.
The Coast Guard Administration (CGA) and Chunghwa Telecom yesterday confirmed that an international undersea cable near Keelung Harbor had been cut by a Chinese ship, the Shunxin-39, a freighter registered in Cameroon. Chunghwa Telecom said the cable had its own backup equipment, and the incident would not affect telecommunications within Taiwan. The CGA said it dispatched a ship under its first fleet after receiving word of the incident and located the Shunxin-39 7 nautical miles (13km) north of Yehliu (野柳) at about 4:40pm on Friday. The CGA demanded that the Shunxin-39 return to seas closer to Keelung Harbor for investigation over the
National Kaohsiung University of Science and Technology (NKUST) yesterday promised it would increase oversight of use of Chinese in course materials, following a social media outcry over instances of simplified Chinese characters being used, including in a final exam. People on Threads wrote that simplified Chinese characters were used on a final exam and in a textbook for a translation course at the university, while the business card of a professor bore the words: “Taiwan Province, China.” Photographs of the exam, the textbook and the business card were posted with the comments. NKUST said that other members of the faculty did not see
An apartment building in New Taipei City’s Sanchong District (三重) collapsed last night after a nearby construction project earlier in the day allegedly caused it to tilt. Shortly after work began at 9am on an ongoing excavation of a construction site on Liuzhang Street (六張街), two neighboring apartment buildings tilted and cracked, leading to exterior tiles peeling off, city officials said. The fire department then dispatched personnel to help evacuate 22 residents from nine households. After the incident, the city government first filled the building at No. 190, which appeared to be more badly affected, with water to stabilize the
The Taipei City Government yesterday said contractors organizing its New Year’s Eve celebrations would be held responsible after a jumbo screen played a Beijing-ran television channel near the event’s end. An image showing China Central Television (CCTV) Channel 3 being displayed was posted on the social media platform Threads, sparking an outcry on the Internet over Beijing’s alleged political infiltration of the municipal government. A Taipei Department of Information and Tourism spokesman said event workers had made a “grave mistake” and that the Television Broadcasts Satellite (TVBS) group had the contract to operate the screens. The city would apply contractual penalties on TVBS
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