A government minister called on Wednesday for full disclosure of documents relating to the Hillsborough stadium disaster as Britain marked the 20th anniversary of a tragedy in which 96 people died.
Andy Burnham, the minister for culture, media and sport, urged the police and ambulance services, as well as the local council to publish all material to help families discover what happened to their loved ones.
The call came on the day families and footballers past and present attended a memorial service at Liverpool’s Anfield ground.
All 96 fans who died in the crush during the 1989 FA Cup semi-final tie with Nottingham Forest, at the neutral ground of Sheffield Wednesday, were Liverpool fans.
Two minutes of silence were observed in Liverpool, Sheffield and Nottingham at 3:06pm, the time the match was abandoned on April 15, 1989.
In a moving tribute, thousands looked on at Anfield as the fans’ anthem You’ll Never Walk Alone was sung by a choir and a candle lit for each of the victims.
The disaster and subsequent inquiry led to the removal of fencing at the front of stands and all-seater stadiums, changing the culture of grounds and creating a safer if less boisterous atmosphere at matches.
Families have been fighting for a fresh inquest to be held, unhappy at the decision by the coroner at the original 1991 inquest to limit the scope of his review. He said the victims were all dead or fatally injured by 3:15pm but the families argue that cut-off meant they never discovered what happened to their relatives and prevented an official investigation into the emergency services’ response.
They also accuse police of a cover-up and of trying to place the blame on supporters’ behavior.
EUROPEAN TARGETS: The planned Munich center would support TSMC’s European customers to design high-performance, energy-efficient chips, an executive said Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電), the world’s largest contract chipmaker, yesterday said that it plans to launch a new research-and-development (R&D) center in Munich, Germany, next quarter to assist customers with chip design. TSMC Europe president Paul de Bot made the announcement during a technology symposium in Amsterdam on Tuesday, the chipmaker said. The new Munich center would be the firm’s first chip designing center in Europe, it said. The chipmaker has set up a major R&D center at its base of operations in Hsinchu and plans to create a new one in the US to provide services for major US customers,
The Ministry of Transportation and Communications yesterday said that it would redesign the written portion of the driver’s license exam to make it more rigorous. “We hope that the exam can assess drivers’ understanding of traffic rules, particularly those who take the driver’s license test for the first time. In the past, drivers only needed to cram a book of test questions to pass the written exam,” Minister of Transportation and Communications Chen Shih-kai (陳世凱) told a news conference at the Taoyuan Motor Vehicle Office. “In the future, they would not be able to pass the test unless they study traffic regulations
GAINING STEAM: The scheme initially failed to gather much attention, with only 188 cards issued in its first year, but gained popularity amid the COVID-19 pandemic Applications for the Employment Gold Card have increased in the past few years, with the card having been issued to a total of 13,191 people from 101 countries since its introduction in 2018, the National Development Council (NDC) said yesterday. Those who have received the card have included celebrities, such as former NBA star Dwight Howard and Australian-South Korean cheerleader Dahye Lee, the NDC said. The four-in-one Employment Gold Card combines a work permit, resident visa, Alien Resident Certificate (ARC) and re-entry permit. It was first introduced in February 2018 through the Act Governing Recruitment and Employment of Foreign Professionals (外國專業人才延攬及雇用法),
‘A SURVIVAL QUESTION’: US officials have been urging the opposition KMT and TPP not to block defense spending, especially the special defense budget, an official said The US plans to ramp up weapons sales to Taiwan to a level exceeding US President Donald Trump’s first term as part of an effort to deter China as it intensifies military pressure on the nation, two US officials said on condition of anonymity. If US arms sales do accelerate, it could ease worries about the extent of Trump’s commitment to Taiwan. It would also add new friction to the tense US-China relationship. The officials said they expect US approvals for weapons sales to Taiwan over the next four years to surpass those in Trump’s first term, with one of them saying
RSS