■ CRIME
Prosecutors, judges probed
The Taipei District Prosecutors Office yesterday questioned two prosecutors at the Keelung District Prosecutors Office and several Taiwan High Court judges as part of an investigation into allegations of special favors for Supreme Court Judge Hsiao Yang-kuei (蕭仰歸), whose son, Hsiao Hsien-luen (蕭賢綸), was involved in a hit-and-run accident. The younger Hsiao was first sentenced to six months in prison and two years probation. When the case was sent to the Taiwan High Court, however, he was found not guilty. The case was closed after prosecutors decided not to appeal the High Court verdict. However, an anonymous source left a comment on the Judges’ Forum, a Judicial Yuan internal Web site, alleging that the High Court judge presiding over the case — Kao Ming-che (高明哲) — was suspected of having been lobbied by Hsiao Yang-kuei to acquit his son. Judge Kao Yu-shuen (高玉舜) was reportedly upset by the move because he insisted that the younger Hsiao was guilty. Both Kaos have been suspended pending investigation by the Control Yuan.
■ MUSIC
Taiwan tenor wins first place
Taiwanese tenor Fernando Wang (王典) won the first Singapore International Vocal Competition on Sunday, beating out 149 competitors. In addition to Wang, sopranos Hong Yuqing (洪郁菁) and Lee Yeu-tsyr (李語慈) were among 12 vocalists who entered the finals. Hong, the gold medal winner of the New York-based New Tang Dynasty TV’s 2008 vocal competition, placed fourth at the Singapore competition. Each singer performed three songs, and despite fierce competition Wang came out ahead.
■ ANIMALS
Ligers born in private zoo
A private zoo has become the first in the country to see the birth of “ligers,” hybrids of lions and tigresses, with the owner facing a fine for violating wildlife rules, officials said yesterday. The three cubs were born on Sunday at the World Snake King Education Farm in the south, but one of them died almost immediately, Huang Kuo-nan (黃國男), the zoo’s owner said. The Tainan County Government said Huang would face a fine of up to NT$50,000 (US$1,565) for breeding wildlife without prior approval from the authorities. It also seized the two remaining cubs and moved them to a home for wild animals.
■ ENVIRONMENT
Firm compensates Yunlin
Formosa Plastics Group yesterday agreed to pay the Yunlin County Government a maximum of NT$500 million in agricultural and fishery losses after its petrochemical plant caught fire a second time in a month and seriously polluted the area. Residents did not seem to be impressed with the result and threatened to stage a large-scale protest today. Formosa Plastics yesterday agreed to allocate NT$3 billion to the NT$10 billion agricultural and fishery stability development fund for four years. It will also fund a tree-planting project for 10 years in proportion to the amount provided by the Forestry Bureau and said they would be happy to offer jobs to local residents. Formosa Plastics and the county government reached the agreement after hours of negotiations, with the latter making nine demands. They included a health hazard evaluation, an environmental agreement, tree-growing and carbon dioxide reduction, employment opportunities, community building, separate waterway construction, a medical development fund, a road maintenance fund and an agricultural and fishery stability development fund.
FLU SEASON: Twenty-six severe cases were reported from Tuesday last week to Monday, including a seven-year-old girl diagnosed with influenza-associated encephalopathy Nearly 140,000 people sought medical assistance for diarrhea last week, the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) said on Tuesday. From April 7 to Saturday last week, 139,848 people sought medical help for diarrhea-related illness, a 15.7 percent increase from last week’s 120,868 reports, CDC Epidemic Intelligence Center Deputy Director Lee Chia-lin (李佳琳) said. The number of people who reported diarrhea-related illness last week was the fourth highest in the same time period over the past decade, Lee said. Over the past four weeks, 203 mass illness cases had been reported, nearly four times higher than the 54 cases documented in the same period
A group of Taiwanese-American and Tibetan-American students at Harvard University on Saturday disrupted Chinese Ambassador to the US Xie Feng’s (謝鋒) speech at the school, accusing him of being responsible for numerous human rights violations. Four students — two Taiwanese Americans and two from Tibet — held up banners inside a conference hall where Xie was delivering a speech at the opening ceremony of the Harvard Kennedy School China Conference 2024. In a video clip provided by the Coalition of Students Resisting the CCP (Chinese Communist Party), Taiwanese-American Cosette Wu (吳亭樺) and Tibetan-American Tsering Yangchen are seen holding banners that together read:
Heat advisories were in effect for nine administrative regions yesterday afternoon as warm southwesterly winds pushed temperatures above 38°C in parts of southern Taiwan, the Central Weather Administration (CWA) said. As of 3:30pm yesterday, Tainan’s Yujing District (玉井) had recorded the day’s highest temperature of 39.7°C, though the measurement will not be included in Taiwan’s official heat records since Yujing is an automatic rather than manually operated weather station, the CWA said. Highs recorded in other areas were 38.7°C in Kaohsiung’s Neimen District (內門), 38.2°C in Chiayi City and 38.1°C in Pingtung’s Sandimen Township (三地門), CWA data showed. The spell of scorching
UNAWARE: Many people sit for long hours every day and eat unhealthy foods, putting them at greater risk of developing one of the ‘three highs,’ an expert said More than 30 percent of adults aged 40 or older who underwent a government-funded health exam were unaware they had at least one of the “three highs” — high blood pressure, high blood lipids or high blood sugar, the Health Promotion Administration (HPA) said yesterday. Among adults aged 40 or older who said they did not have any of the “three highs” before taking the health exam, more than 30 percent were found to have at least one of them, Adult Preventive Health Examination Service data from 2022 showed. People with long-term medical conditions such as hypertension or diabetes usually do not