The Taipei District Court yesterday sentenced Lin Chang-cheng (
Twenty thousand people were evacuated from the shopping venue when the fire broke out on Feb. 18 this year.
Another two suspects, Wang Lin-kwun (
Wang is a close friend of Lin Chang-cheng's and owned a shop selling Chinese teapots on the mall's seventh floor. Lin Ching-chi is Wang's uncle.
According to the verdict, Lin Chang-cheng was upset with Core Pacific Group Chairman Shen Ching-ching's (
The verdict also says that Lin Chang-cheng then lured Wang to take part in the arson by offering him NT$100,000, and that they initially planned to destroy the mall's power system by means of a fire during business hours.
The court's findings say Wang invited his uncle Lin Ching-chi to start the fire.
According to the court, Lin Ching-chi filled empty mineral-water bottles with gasoline and set them alight in the electricity room on the mall's third floor.
"Lin Chang-cheng ignored public safety by masterminding the arson because of his personal problems at work and invited Wang and Lin Ching-chi to join the plan. Both Lin Ching-chi and Wang showed remorse for their crimes after they were arrested. So the court issued a four-year sentence for Lin Chang-cheng and three years and eight months for both Wang and Lin Ching-chi," said a court spokesman.
An unnamed Core Pacific official yesterday was quoted as saying that the damage to the company's reputation had been greater than its financial losses.
Kenting National Park service technician Yang Jien-fon (楊政峰) won a silver award in World Grand Prix Photography Awards Spring Season for his photograph of two male rat snakes intertwined in combat. Yang’s colleagues at Kenting National Park said he is a master of nature photography who has been held back by his job in civil service. The awards accept entries in all four seasons across six categories: architectural and urban photography, black-and-white and fine art photography, commercial and fashion photography, documentary and people photography, nature and experimental photography, and mobile photography. Awards are ranked according to scores and divided into platinum, gold and
More than half of the bamboo vipers captured in Tainan in the past few years were found in the city’s Sinhua District (新化), while other districts had smaller catches or none at all. Every year, Tainan captures about 6,000 snakes which have made their way into people’s homes. Of the six major venomous snakes in Taiwan, the cobra, the many-banded krait, the brown-spotted pit viper and the bamboo viper are the most frequently captured. The high concentration of bamboo vipers captured in Sinhua District is puzzling. Tainan Agriculture Bureau Forestry and Nature Conservation Division head Chu Chien-ming (朱健明) earlier this week said that the
The Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) caucus yesterday said it opposes the introduction of migrant workers from India until a mechanism is in place to prevent workers from absconding. Minister of Labor Hung Sun-han (洪申翰) on Thursday told the Legislative Yuan that the first group of migrant workers from India could be introduced as early as this year, as part of a government program. The caucus’ opposition to the policy is based on the assessment that “the risk is too high,” KMT caucus secretary-general Lin Pei-hsiang (林沛祥) said. Taiwan has a serious and long-standing problem of migrant workers absconding from their contracts, indicating that
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