■ Crime
3C's founder convicted
Wu Tsann-kuen (吳燦坤), founder and chairman of the Tsann Kuen Enterprise Co (3C, 燦坤實業), was found guilty of violations of the Securities and Exchange Law by the Kaohsiung district court yesterday. He was sentenced to 18 months in prison. His personal assistant, Chuang Hui-fang (莊惠芳), was sentenced to 14 months. The two were found to have willfully manipulated the share price of Sunfar Computers Co (順發電腦) after the company rejected an offer to purchase its shares. According to the judgement, Tsann Kuen Enterprises had approached Sunfar's general manager, Wu Chin-chang (吳錦昌), with an offer to purchase Sunfar shares for NT$20, although they were trading on the market for NT$72. After the offer was rejected, Wu and Chuang manipulated the stock market to force down the price of Sunfar shares.
■ Health
Mental hospitals increase
The number of mental institutions in Taiwan had increased to 339 as of the end of September last year, up 45 from a year earlier, according to a report released yesterday by the Directorate General of Budget, Accounting and Statistics. The government has continued to funnel national resources and offer incentives to encourage the private sector to expand mental hospital wards in order to upgrade facilities for mental patients, the report said. There were a total of 27,000 hospital beds for mental patients as of the end of September, up 7.5 percent over the same period of 2003, it said. The number of mental health workers also increased 4.1 percent to 7,223 people as of the end of September, which included 6,555 full-time workers and 668 part-time workers, it said.
■ Culture
Kaohsiung starts Hakka body
Emphasizing its dedication to multiculturalism, Kaohsiung City Government announced the establishment of its Hakka Affairs Commission yesterday. The head of the committee will be Liao Sung-hsiung (廖松雄), who was originally the department head of the Executive Yuan's Council for Hakka Affairs southern regional office. The establishment of the commis-sion is the next step of the city's dedication to the promotion of Hakka culture, as shown earlier through the establishment of the Kaohsiung City Hakka Culture and Affairs Founda-tion by city mayor Frank Hsieh (謝長廷) in 1999, the city government said yesterday. Kaohsiung City has 250,000 people of Hakka descent.
■ Disaster Relief
DOH to send aid team
The Department of Health (DOH) will send a 17-member team to the Thai island of Phuket today to help with epidemic-prevention work there over the next three months. The DOH noted that one week after lethal tsunami triggered by a magnitude-9.0 earthquake hit Phuket Dec. 26, the need for urgent medical care is no longer there but the specter of an epidemic outbreak is emerging. The team, comprised of epidemic prevention experts and medical personnel, will bring with them 1.5 tons of health and hygiene equipment and medicine, with the focus on public health. The DOH said that in the next three months, they will continue to send personnel to Phuket who will work there on a rotational basis.
THE HAWAII FACTOR: While a 1965 opinion said an attack on Hawaii would not trigger Article 5, the text of the treaty suggests the state is covered, the report says NATO could be drawn into a conflict in the Taiwan Strait if Chinese forces attacked the US mainland or Hawaii, a NATO Defense College report published on Monday says. The report, written by James Lee, an assistant research fellow at Academia Sinica’s Institute of European and American Studies, states that under certain conditions a Taiwan contingency could trigger Article 5 of NATO, under which an attack against any member of the alliance is considered an attack against all members, necessitating a response. Article 6 of the North Atlantic Treaty specifies that an armed attack in the territory of any member in Europe,
FLU SEASON: Twenty-six severe cases were reported from Tuesday last week to Monday, including a seven-year-old girl diagnosed with influenza-associated encephalopathy Nearly 140,000 people sought medical assistance for diarrhea last week, the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) said on Tuesday. From April 7 to Saturday last week, 139,848 people sought medical help for diarrhea-related illness, a 15.7 percent increase from last week’s 120,868 reports, CDC Epidemic Intelligence Center Deputy Director Lee Chia-lin (李佳琳) said. The number of people who reported diarrhea-related illness last week was the fourth highest in the same time period over the past decade, Lee said. Over the past four weeks, 203 mass illness cases had been reported, nearly four times higher than the 54 cases documented in the same period
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
HOSPITALITY HIT: Hotels in Hualien have an occupancy rate of 10 percent, down from 30 percent before the earthquake, a Tourism Administration official said The Executive Yuan yesterday unveiled a stimulus package of vouchers and subsidies to revive tourism in Hualien County following a quake measuring 7.2 on the Richter scale. The tremor on April 3, which killed at least 17 people and left two others missing, caused the county an estimated NT$3 billion (US$92.7 million) in damages. The Ministry of Economic Affairs is to issue vouchers worth NT$200 at the price of NT$100 for purchases at the Dongdamen Night Market (東大門夜市) in Hualien City to boost spending, a ministry official told a news conference after a Cabinet meeting in Taipei. The ministry plans to issue 18,400