Hualien police announced yesterday they had solved the murders of two Aboriginal girls, whose bodies were found dumped on a riverbed in Hsiulin Township (
"The suspect Kao Lu-you (
"On Saturday night Kao asked Chen to talk about the matter, and the other victim, surnamed Lee -- Chen's friend -- accompanied her to meet Kao, but both were strangled," added Chen.
Police on Monday night identified the victim named Chen as a 15-year-old and the girl named Lee as a 12-year-old, both junior high school dropouts in Hualien County. This contradicted earlier reports, which said that the victims were in their 20s and 30s.
The police blamed forensic examiners yesterday for "wrongly estimating" the two victims' ages, thus complicating the investigation.
The police officer said Kao's family had paid Chen's family NT$100,000 (US$2,985) to settle the [lawsuit for under-age sex] matter out of court, but because statutory rape is a crime that must be refer-red to prosecutors, Kao became incensed when he received a court order summoning him for trial.
He added that police had identified three of Kao's friends, who helped him throw the bodies off the bridge. As of press time, police were still looking for them.
Hualien police on Sunday found the two bodies on a riverbed in the township.
Police initially thought both were sex workers murdered by their clients.
Taipei, New Taipei City, Keelung and Taoyuan would issue a decision at 8pm on whether to cancel work and school tomorrow due to forecasted heavy rain, Keelung Mayor Hsieh Kuo-liang (謝國樑) said today. Hsieh told reporters that absent some pressing reason, the four northern cities would announce the decision jointly at 8pm. Keelung is expected to receive between 300mm and 490mm of rain in the period from 2pm today through 2pm tomorrow, Central Weather Administration data showed. Keelung City Government regulations stipulate that school and work can be canceled if rain totals in mountainous or low-elevation areas are forecast to exceed 350mm in
EVA Airways president Sun Chia-ming (孫嘉明) and other senior executives yesterday bowed in apology over the death of a flight attendant, saying the company has begun improving its health-reporting, review and work coordination mechanisms. “We promise to handle this matter with the utmost responsibility to ensure safer and healthier working conditions for all EVA Air employees,” Sun said. The flight attendant, a woman surnamed Sun (孫), died on Friday last week of undisclosed causes shortly after returning from a work assignment in Milan, Italy, the airline said. Chinese-language media reported that the woman fell ill working on a Taipei-to-Milan flight on Sept. 22
COUNTERMEASURE: Taiwan was to implement controls for 47 tech products bound for South Africa after the latter downgraded and renamed Taipei’s ‘de facto’ offices The Ministry of Foreign Affairs is still reviewing a new agreement proposed by the South African government last month to regulate the status of reciprocal representative offices, Minister of Foreign Affairs Lin Chia-lung (林佳龍) said yesterday. Asked about the latest developments in a year-long controversy over Taiwan’s de facto representative office in South Africa, Lin during a legislative session said that the ministry was consulting with legal experts on the proposed new agreement. While the new proposal offers Taiwan greater flexibility, the ministry does not find it acceptable, Lin said without elaborating. The ministry is still open to resuming retaliatory measures against South
1.4nm WAFERS: While TSMC is gearing up to expand its overseas production, it would also continue to invest in Taiwan, company chairman and CEO C.C. Wei said Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC) has applied for permission to construct a new plant in the Central Taiwan Science Park (中部科學園區), which it would use for the production of new high-speed wafers, the National Science and Technology Council said yesterday. The council, which supervises three major science parks in Taiwan, confirmed that the Central Taiwan Science Park Bureau had received an application on Friday from TSMC, the world’s largest contract chipmaker, to commence work on the new A14 fab. A14 technology, a 1.4 nanometer (nm) process, is designed to drive artificial intelligence transformation by enabling faster computing and greater power