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Taiwan News Quick Take

■EARTHQUAKES

Temblor brings aftershocks

More than 190 aftershocks had been recorded as of early yesterday since an earthquake measuring 6 on the Richter scale hit central Taiwan a day earlier, seismologists said. Fourteen of the aftershocks reached magnitude 3 or stronger, but most of the others were small, according to Kuo Kai-wen (郭鎧紋), director of the Central Weather Bureau’s Seismological Center. More aftershocks, some of which might reach magnitude 5, are expected to follow in the coming two weeks, Kuo said, adding that they were a natural release of energy and urging the public not to panic. The earthquake, which had its epicenter in Mingchien Township (名間), Nantou County at a depth of 19.3km, was the strongest tremor to hit Taiwan since the devastating magnitude 7.3 earthquake of Sept. 21, 1999. No major damage was reported. Also on Thursday, a magnitude 4.4 earthquake struck at 3:25am in Hualien County, seismologists said. The quake, centered 2.4km northwest of Hualien City at a depth of 6.5km, was unrelated to the one in Nantou, the bureau said.



■CRIME

Karaoke singers attacked

An explosion and fire caused by a brawl at a restaurant yesterday left three people dead and seven injured. The fight started at a seafood restaurant in Gueishan Township (龜山), Taoyuan County, in the early hours of yesterday after a group of Vietnamese migrant workers complained that a group of Thais were singing too loudly in the restaurant’s karaoke room. Officials said they believed a Vietnamese man snatched a gas tank from the kitchen, turned it on and ignited it, before throwing it in the karaoke room, causing an explosion. Firemen found three bodies and rushed seven injured people to hospital. Police said all the injured were Thai migrant workers, but the nationalities of the three dead had not been confirmed. “The injured include six men and one woman. Among them, three suffered burns to 70 percent of their bodies, and the others burns to 10 percent to 30 percent of their bodies,” a police officer at Gueishan police station said. “Three Vietnamese suspects are being questioned,” he said.



■SOCIETY

Family cremates wrong man

A funeral parlor apologized on Thursday for mixing up two corpses, causing one family to hold a memorial service with the incorrect body and the other to cremate the wrong corpse, local media reported. When the first family opened the coffin to prepare the body for the funeral, they noticed that a red envelope they had placed in the coffin was in a different place and contained more money than they had included. The man’s gold tooth was also missing. The family phoned the funeral parlour to notify them of the discrepancies. The other family, meanwhile, had cremated their loved one’s body. The funeral parlor paid the first family NT$396,000 (US$12,170) and arranged for the ashes to be returned. It offered to pay for a second funeral for the other family.



■CRIME

Police bust ‘fraud ring’

Twenty-four members of a suspected fraud ring — 17 in Taiwan and seven in China — were arrested on Thursday by police on the two sides of the Strait through a joint cross-border crackdown, the Criminal Investigation Bureau (CIB) announced yesterday. Seventeen people were detained on Thursday by CIB agents and police in the Taipei, Miaoli, Taichung, Changhua and Kaohsiung areas, while seven suspected accomplices were arrested in China by local authorities there.
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