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Bear severely injures child
A three-year-old boy was critically injured yesterday after a caged circus bear nearly ripped off his arm in southern Taiwan, a hospital official said. Doctors performed emergency surgery to reattach the right arm of the boy, who was found lying in a pool of blood by the bear's cage on a farm where a circus from Vietnam was performing, an official from Chi Mei Hospital said. Farm staff said the boy, who went to see the bear perform stunts like riding a bicycle, might have provoked the animal by trying to pat it. The incident occurred while his mother was talking to performers. The performance was suspended after the attack. The boy's parents blamed the farm owners for the attack for failing to put up warning signs in front of the bear's cage, local newspapers said.
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Book on sex slaves launched
Taiwan's first book about "comfort women" who were forced into sexual slavery by Japanese troops in World War II, was launched earlier this week. The book, titled Silent Scars: History of Sexual Slavery by the Japanese Military, includes more than 200 photos featuring the women, the Japanese brothels in which they were imprisoned and articles about the feelings of these women. According to statistics, some 20,000 women were used as sex slaves by the Japanese military during World War II, most of whom came from China, Taiwan, South Korea, the Philippines and other Asian countries. Some 2,000 came from Taiwan. The Japanese government has consistently refused to apologize to the "comfort women."
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Teen hero gets cash award
A courageous 13-year old junior-high school student, surnamed Lee, was awarded NT$20,000 by the Chiayi Police Bureau yesterday in recognition of his bravery in foiling a bank robbery a day earlier. Lee saw the would-be bank robber enter the Talin branch of Chiayi Fourth Credit Cooperative as he was passing by the bank on Monday afternoon. He grabbed the suspect around the neck and then several tellers helped overpowered the man. The robber had been armed with a home-made handgun. Chiayi Mayor Chen Li-chen (陳麗貞) and Police Commissioner Chen Kuo-en (陳國恩) held a citation ceremony for Lee at his school yesterday morning and presented him with the cash award. Lee's classmates expressed admiration for his bravery and quick thinking, calling him a hero. Lee also won praise from his father, although his mother suggested that he should not put his own safety at risk again if faced with a similar situation in the future.
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Doctors celebrate `rebirth'
Doctors at Kaohsiung's Veterans General Hospital joined the family of a man yesterday to celebrate his "rebirth" from a near-fatal traffic accident in which his heart was ruptured and stopped. Over a month ago, Chien Chao-yi (簡朝益) was sent to the emergency unit of the hospital after a serious motorcycle accident. When he reached the hospital, doctors found that his breathing and heart had stopped. The doctors diagnosed a ruptured heart and opened the patient's chest without anaesthetic and without obtaining permission from his family to do the operation. Ye Wen-bin (葉文彬), a surgeon, said he and his colleagues felt they had time to save Chien's life, so they proceeded with the surgery, while Chang Hung-tai (張宏泰), who was one of the surgical team, said the survival rate for similar cases is less than 2 percent.
LOUD AND PROUD Taiwan might have taken a drubbing against Australia and Japan, but you might not know it from the enthusiasm and numbers of the fans Taiwan might not be expected to win the World Baseball Classic (WBC) but their fans are making their presence felt in Tokyo, with tens of thousands decked out in the team’s blue, blowing horns and singing songs. Taiwanese fans have packed out the Tokyo Dome for all three of their games so far and even threatened to drown out home team supporters when their team played Japan on Friday. They blew trumpets, chanted for their favorite players and had their own cheerleading squad who dance on a stage during the game. The team struggled to match that exuberance on the field, with
Taiwanese paleontologists have discovered fossil evidence that pythons up to 4m long inhabited Taiwan during the Pleistocene epoch, reporting their findings in the international scientific journal Historical Biology. National Taiwan University (NTU) Institute of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology associate professor Tsai Cheng-hsiu (蔡政修) led the team that discovered the largest snake fossil ever found in Taiwan. The single trunk vertebra was discovered in Tainan at the Chiting Formation, dated to between 400,000 and 800,000 years ago in the Middle Pleistocene, the paper said. The area also produced Taiwan’s first avian fossil, as well as crocodile, mammoth, saber-toothed cat and rhinoceros fossils, it said. Discoveries
Taiwanese paleontologists have discovered fossil evidence that pythons up to 4m long inhabited Taiwan during the Pleistocene epoch, reporting their findings in the international scientific journal Historical Biology. National Taiwan University (NTU) Institute of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology associate professor Tsai Cheng-hsiu (蔡政修) led the team that discovered the largest snake fossil ever found in Taiwan. A single trunk vertebra was discovered in Tainan at the Chiting Formation, dated to between 800,000 to 400,000 years ago in the Middle Pleistocene, the paper said. The area also produced Taiwan’s first avian fossil, as well as crocodile, mammoth, sabre-toothed cat and rhinoceros fossils, it said. Discoveries
Whether Japan would help defend Taiwan in case of a cross-strait conflict would depend on the US and the extent to which Japan would be allowed to act under the US-Japan Security Treaty, former Japanese minister of defense Satoshi Morimoto said. As China has not given up on the idea of invading Taiwan by force, to what extent Japan could support US military action would hinge on Washington’s intention and its negotiation with Tokyo, Morimoto said in an interview with the Liberty Times (sister paper of the Taipei Times) yesterday. There has to be sufficient mutual recognition of how Japan could provide
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