Gang leader Chi Chun-i (紀俊毅), 26, a former member of Lin Ming-hwa's (林明樺) crime syndicate, was married in a Chiayi prison to a Taichung woman yesterday, local media reports said.
Chi is currently serving three life sentences for numerous murder and kidnapping offenses. The ceremony was attended by a small group of friends and family, who left the prison via a side door immediately after the wedding to avoid the press, the Central News Agency (CNA) reported yesterday.
Chi was apprehended by police in Keelung with underworld boss Lin Ming-hwa in November last year.
The two were preparing to escape to China after kidnapping a businessman for a NT$300 million (US$9 million) ransom in Budai Township (布袋鎮), Chiayi County.
Chi and Lin were also wanted in connection with a brutal shoot-out at a Taichung tea house in 2004. Three people died and two were seriously injured in that incident, according to CNA.
Lin committed suicide by ingesting cyanide shortly after being taken into custody, local media reported. Chi was held incommunicado and has since been sentenced to life in prison.
His wife, surnamed Lu, 24, visited Lin on more than 30 occasions and applied for a marriage license soon after she was granted visitation rights, the CNA report said, adding that Lin and his bride were not allowed to spend their wedding night together.
The couple's witness, the report said, was none other than Lin Ming-hwa's widow.
The Taipei Department of Health yesterday said it has launched a probe into a restaurant at Far Eastern Sogo Xinyi A13 Department Store after a customer died of suspected food poisoning. A preliminary investigation on Sunday found missing employee health status reports and unsanitary kitchen utensils at Polam Kopitiam (寶林茶室) in the department store’s basement food court, the department said. No direct relationship between the food poisoning death and the restaurant was established, as no food from the day of the incident was available for testing and no other customers had reported health complaints, it said, adding that the investigation is ongoing. Later
REVENGE TRAVEL: A surge in ticket prices should ease this year, but inflation would likely keep tickets at a higher price than before the pandemic Scoot is to offer six additional flights between Singapore and Northeast Asia, with all routes transiting Taipei from April 1, as the budget airline continues to resume operations that were paused during the COVID-19 pandemic, a Scoot official said on Thursday. Vice president of sales Lee Yong Sin (李榮新) said at a gathering with reporters in Taipei that the number of flights from Singapore to Japan and South Korea with a stop in Taiwan would increase from 15 to 21 each week. That change means the number of the Singapore-Taiwan-Tokyo flights per week would increase from seven to 12, while Singapore-Taiwan-Seoul
BAD NEIGHBORS: China took fourth place among countries spreading disinformation, with Hong Kong being used as a hub to spread propaganda, a V-Dem study found Taiwan has been rated as the country most affected by disinformation for the 11th consecutive year in a study by the global research project Varieties of Democracy (V-Dem). The nation continues to be a target of disinformation originating from China, and Hong Kong is increasingly being used as a base from which to disseminate that disinformation, the report said. After Taiwan, Latvia and Palestine ranked second and third respectively, while Nicaragua, North Korea, Venezuela and China, in that order, were the countries that spread the most disinformation, the report said. Each country listed in the report was given a score,
POOR PREPARATION: Cultures can form on food that is out of refrigeration for too long and cooking does not reliably neutralize their toxins, an epidemiologist said Medical professionals yesterday said that suspected food poisoning deaths revolving around a restaurant at Far Eastern Department Store Xinyi A13 Store in Taipei could have been caused by one of several types of bacterium. Ho Mei-shang (何美鄉), an epidemiologist at Academia Sinica’s Institute of Biomedical Sciences, wrote on Facebook that the death of a 39-year-old customer of the restaurant suggests the toxin involved was either “highly potent or present in massive large quantities.” People who ate at the restaurant showed symptoms within hours of consuming the food, suggesting that the poisoning resulted from contamination by a toxin and not infection of the