■ Crime
Dead man's kin seek help
The family of a murdered China-based businessman appealed yesterday for government assistance in solving the murder. The mother, sister and nephew of Ho Ching-sheng (何進陞) called a news conference to ask the government to look into claims by Chinese authorities that Ho was killed in a scuffle following a traffic accident. They also called for China to arrest five suspects who are at large. Two suspects have been arrested. Ho, 48, from Fengyuan, Taichung, was in the electroplating business in Guangdong Province for more than a decade. He reportedly had a dispute with some Chinese when he and a woman went for a snack early last Wednesday morning. Ho died of massive bleeding after his arms and legs were cut off. The family identified the body last Friday and then brought his ashes back to Taiwan.
■ Crime
Two drug suspects nabbed
Police arrested the two alleged kingpins of a drug gang on Monday in Kangsan, Kaohsiung County, and seized 1.314kg of heroin, according to a report by the Nantze police station. The arrest came three months after Kaohsiung District Court Prosecutor Chiang Li-ju (姜麗儒) received a report that a drug gang, reportedly led by suspect Chen Kuo-lin (陳國林), 39, had smuggled large quantities of heroin into the country by fishing boat or container ship. Police intercepted a sedan at an expressway interchange at Kangsan on Monday afternoon and found four blocks of heroin. They arrested Chen and Shih Pao-hsing (施保行). The heroin had a street value of NT$50 million (US$1.47 million). The police are trying to find the sources of the drug and the other members of the gang, the report said.
■ Society
Blind to climb Hsuehshan
A group of vision-impaired people from six Asian countries will scale Hsueh-shan next week, the Chinese Taipei Orienteering Asso-ciation (CTOA) said yester-day. This will mark the first time that blind people from home and abroad have joined together to scale a high peak in this country, association president Peng Mu-shan (彭木山) said. In the past few years, Peng said, the CTOA has helped vision-impaired people to climb Yushan and Dabajianshan, as well as Japan's Mount Fuji. "We have invited vision-impaired people from Thai-land, Malaysia, Singapore, South Korea and Japan to join their local counterparts in conquering the 3,201m-high Hsuehshan," Peng said, adding that the event is aimed at promoting inter-national friendship and helping vision-impaired people expand leisure activities. Peng said 24 blind Taiwanese will take part in the expedition that starts on Monday.
■ Culture
Cloud Gate to appear in NYC
The Cloud Gate Dance Theater will give four per-formances at the Howard Gilman Opera House in New York later this month as part of the Next Wave Festival, at the invitation of the Brooklyn Academy of Music and the Asia Society. This is the third time that Cloud Gate has been invited to attend the Next Wave Festival. At a press conference at the Taipei Cultural Center in New York on Monday, Lin Hwai-min (林懷民), Cloud Gate's founder, said that the group will perform Moon Water at the festival. On Nov. 19, the Asia Society will also sponsor a lecture demonstration with Lin that will introduce his sources of inspiration.
Starlux Airlines, Taiwan’s newest international carrier, has announced it would apply to join the Oneworld global airline alliance before the end of next year. In an investor conference on Monday, Starlux Airlines chief executive officer Glenn Chai (翟健華) said joining the alliance would help it access Taiwan. Chai said that if accepted, Starlux would work with other airlines in the alliance on flight schedules, passenger transits and frequent flyer programs. The Oneworld alliance has 13 members, including American Airlines, British Airways, Cathay Pacific and Qantas, and serves more than 900 destinations in 170 territories. Joining Oneworld would also help boost
A new tropical storm formed late yesterday near Guam and is to approach closest to Taiwan on Thursday, the Central Weather Administration (CWA) said. Tropical Storm Pulasan became the 14th named storm of the year at 9:25pm yesterday, the agency said. As of 8am today, it was near Guam traveling northwest at 21kph, it said. The storm’s structure is relatively loose and conditions for strengthening are limited, WeatherRisk analyst Wu Sheng-yu (吳聖宇) said on Facebook. Its path is likely to be similar to Typhoon Bebinca, which passed north of Taiwan over Japan’s Ryukyu Islands and made landfall in Shanghai this morning, he said. However, it
Taiwan's Gold Apollo Co (金阿波羅通信) said today that the pagers used in detonations in Lebanon the day before were not made by it, but by a company called BAC which has a license to use its brand. At least nine people were killed and nearly 3,000 wounded when pagers used by Hezbollah members detonated simultaneously across Lebanon yesterday. Images of destroyed pagers analyzed by Reuters showed a format and stickers on the back that were consistent with pagers made by Gold Apollo. A senior Lebanese security source told Reuters that Hezbollah had ordered 5,000 pagers from Taiwan-based Gold Apollo. "The product was not
COLD FACTS: ‘Snow skin’ mooncakes, made with a glutinous rice skin and kept at a low temperature, have relatively few calories compared with other mooncakes Traditional mooncakes are a typical treat for many Taiwanese in the lead-up to the Mid-Autumn Festival, but a Taipei-based dietitian has urged people not to eat more than one per day and not to have them every day due to their high fat and calorie content. As mooncakes contain a lot of oil and sugar, they can have negative health effects on older people and those with diabetes, said Lai Yu-han (賴俞含), a dietitian at Taipei Hospital of the Ministry of Health and Welfare. “The maximum you can have is one mooncake a day, and do not eat them every day,” Lai