Former Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) Tainan County Council speaker Wu Chien-bao (吳健保) yesterday started a two-year jail term for fixing professional baseball games.
The Tainan District Prosecutors Office said Wu, who reported to prosecutors yesterday morning, applied for a delay in the carrying out of his sentence, but prosecutors rejected the request and Wu was taken directly to the Tainan Prison.
The final ruling said that beginning in 2005, Wu ran an illegal gambling business that took bets on professional baseball games.
The ruling added that Wu and three La New Bears players fixed a game when the team played the Chinatrust Whales in Kaohsiung on April 28, 2007, making illegal profits of NT$8,650,000 (US$286,000) from the outcome of the game.
At the time, Wu was serving as an independent Greater Tainan councilor, but was dismissed after being found guilty in the final verdict.
In related news, the Supreme Court yesterday sentenced former prosecutor Wu Chieh-jen (吳傑人) to seven years and six months in prison on counts of corruption, rape, lewd acts and infringement of freedom of movement.
The sentence was a final verdict.
Wu Chieh-jen, who worked at the Kaohsiung District Prosecutors’ Office, was found guilty of committing crimes against more than 10 women who were targets of his investigations from 1999 and 2006, the Supreme Court said.
Wu Chieh-jen used his influence as a prosecutor to coerce the women to have sex with him, the ruling said.
Several of the victims were mentally and emotionally traumatized as a result of his actions, the ruling said.
Left-Handed Girl (左撇子女孩), a film by Taiwanese director Tsou Shih-ching (鄒時擎) and cowritten by Oscar-winning director Sean Baker, won the Gan Foundation Award for Distribution at the Cannes Critics’ Week on Wednesday. The award, which includes a 20,000 euro (US$22,656) prize, is intended to support the French release of a first or second feature film by a new director. According to Critics’ Week, the prize would go to the film’s French distributor, Le Pacte. "A melodrama full of twists and turns, Left-Handed Girl retraces the daily life of a single mother and her two daughters in Taipei, combining the irresistible charm of
A Philippine official has denied allegations of mistreatment of crew members during Philippine authorities’ boarding of a Taiwanese fishing vessel on Monday. Philippine Bureau of Fisheries and Aquatic Resources (BFAR) spokesman Nazario Briguera on Friday said that BFAR law enforcement officers “observed the proper boarding protocols” when they boarded the Taiwanese vessel Sheng Yu Feng (昇漁豐號) and towed it to Basco Port in the Philippines. Briguera’s comments came a day after the Taiwanese captain of the Sheng Yu Feng, Chen Tsung-tun (陳宗頓), held a news conference in Pingtung County and accused the Philippine authorities of mistreatment during the boarding of
The Chinese Communist Party (CCP) is pushing for residents of Kinmen and Lienchiang counties to acquire Chinese ID cards in a bid to “blur national identities,” a source said. The efforts are part of China’s promotion of a “Kinmen-Xiamen twin-city living sphere, including a cross-strait integration pilot zone in China’s Fujian Province,” the source said. “The CCP is already treating residents of these outlying islands as Chinese citizens. It has also intensified its ‘united front’ efforts and infiltration of those islands,” the source said. “There is increasing evidence of espionage in Kinmen, particularly of Taiwanese military personnel being recruited by the
88.2 PERCENT INCREASE: The variants driving the current outbreak are not causing more severe symptoms, but are ‘more contagious’ than previous variants, an expert said Number of COVID-19 cases in the nation is surging, with the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) describing the ongoing wave of infections as “rapid and intense,” and projecting that the outbreak would continue through the end of July. A total of 19,097 outpatient and emergency visits related to COVID-19 were reported from May 11 to Saturday last week, an 88.2 percent increase from the previous week’s 10,149 visits, CDC data showed. The nearly 90 percent surge in case numbers also marks the sixth consecutive weekly increase, although the total remains below the 23,778 recorded during the same period last year,