CRIME
FAT chairman detained
The Taipei District Court on Thursday ordered that Far Eastern Air Transport Corp (FAT) chairman Chang Kang-wei (張綱維) be detained and held incommunicado on charges of fraud and embezzlement. The court approved Chang’s detention two days after prosecutors appealed its decision to release him on bail after a preliminary hearing of the case. Chang was charged in connection with false property declarations, fraud and embezzlement. He has been under investigation since the airline abruptly canceled all of its flights in December last year and laid off nearly 1,000 employees, citing financial problems. A month later, the government revoked the airline’s civil aviation flight permit, and its air rights for domestic and international flights were reassigned to other carriers. Prosecutors have since been investigating the nature of the company’s financial problems.
ENVIRONMENT
Dead fish removed
Nearly 1 tonne of dead fish has been removed from Tainan’s old transport canal, their deaths likely caused by a lack of oxygen, the Tainan Environmental Protection Bureau said yesterday. The fish, including milkfish and mullet, were found in the canal, which separates Anping District (安平) from downtown Tainan, in the section between Linan Bridge (臨安橋) and Yunghua Bridge (永華橋). The carcasses, many of which were about the size of a human palm, were removed from the waterway after the incident was first reported on Wednesday, the bureau said. An initial investigation suggested that the fish most likely died from suffocation, it said. After days of heavy downpours, sediment and domestic sewage may have washed into the canal from rising water levels in drainage channels, leading to a sharp drop in dissolved oxygen, officials said.
LOTTERY
Jackpot donated to charity
Eighteen people won the NT$10 million jackpot in the January and February uniform invoice lottery, one of whom donated the entire prize to charity. The winner, who spent NT$300 online on Gash Points, a gaming currency supported by a wide range of online gaming platforms, designated his winnings as a charitable donation, the Ministry of Finance said. As the winner decreed that the invoice be donated to the Humanistic Education Foundation at the time of the purchase, the prize money would go to the foundation, the ministry said. Among the winners, seven spent less than NT$50 to win the top prize, including one who spent only NT$12 on a pack of tissue paper at a grocery store in Tainan. The winnings can be claimed from Monday to July 6, the ministry said.
JUSTICE
Files to be published
A total of 407 declassified files on 118 political cases during the White Terror era have been transferred from the National Security Bureau to the National Archives Administration, which is to make them available to the public, President Tsai Ing-wen (蔡英文) said. Tsai made the announcement on Facebook, assuring the public that the Transitional Justice Commission would expedite the review process and help expose the historical truth behind the nation’s past authoritarian rule. The declassified files include information on the deaths of veteran political activist Lin I-hsiung’s (林義雄) mother and twin daughters, who were stabbed to death on Feb. 28, 1980, she said. Another pertains to the death of democracy activist Chen Wen-chen (陳文成), who died in mysterious circumstances in 1981 during the Martial Law era.
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