The Taiwan High Court yesterday sentenced a woman to three years in prison on charges of extortion and intimidation against the late Straits Exchange Foundation (SEF) chairman Koo Chen-fu (辜振甫).
Chang Yi-hua (
The court ruling noted that Chang, in collaboration with her mother Teng Hsiang-mei (
Koo was a business tycoon who led the Koo Group of companies from 1940 until his death in January 2005. He also chaired the SEF -- a semi-official organization set up to handle technical and business matters with China in the absence of diplomatic relations.
Teng and Chang went public with their claims in 2005 when Koo's family refused to make any more payments after his death at age 89.
According to Teng, she first met Koo in 1964 when he was 48 and she was 23, and the two had a relationship until Koo's death. Three years after Koo and Teng met, she had Chang, who is now 41, she said.
Teng had been sentenced to five years by the District Court. Her High Court appeal was suspended because she provided a medical diagnosis showing that she suffers from chronic depression and suicidal tendencies. The court has ordered further psychological evaluations of Teng before resuming proceedings.
Teng and Chang were both indicted last year after DNA tests failed to establish any kinship between Chang and Koo.
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
UPDATED TEST: The new rules aim to assess drivers’ awareness of risky behaviors and how they respond under certain circumstances, the Highway Bureau said Driver’s license applicants who fail to yield to pedestrians at intersections or to check blind spots, or omit pointing-and-calling procedures would fail the driving test, the Highway Bureau said yesterday. The change is set to be implemented at the end of the month, and is part of the bureau’s reform of the driving portion of the test, which has been criticized for failing to assess whether drivers can operate vehicles safely. Sedan drivers would be tested regarding yielding to pedestrians and turning their heads to check blind spots, while drivers of large vehicles would be tested on their familiarity with pointing-and-calling
RSS