CRIME
Makiyo driver leaves hospital
Lin Yu-chun (林余駿), the taxi driver at the center of the Makiyo case, was discharged from hospital and is resting in a rented house nearby, Lin’s lawyer Chou Wu-jung (周武榮) said yesterday. Lin was allegedly beaten by Takateru Tomoyori, a Japanese friend of the local singer and actress, and Makiyo herself on Feb. 2. Both have been charged with causing severe bodily harm, and the court hearing is due to begin on Thursday.
CRIME
Girl killed after KTV fight
A teenage girl died after allegedly being hit by a car in front of a KTV parlor early yesterday morning, following a dispute between two groups of young people, Miaoli County police said. Police said the 17-year-old girl, surnamed Chuang (莊), was allegedly killed by a car driven by a 30-year-old man, Wang Yi-chieh (王義傑), who was drunk at the time. Wang has been charged with murder and the case was sent to prosecutors for further investigation, police added. Police said that late on Saturday night, Chuang and her boyfriend, surnamed Wu (吳), attended a party at a KTV. Wang was drinking with his friends in another booth and he telephoned a female friend, surnamed Hsia (夏), who was in another booth with Chuang, and asked them both to come to his booth. After the two girls had been in Wang’s booth for some time, Wu came to ask the two girls to return. A fight ensued. When both parties left the KTV, they began arguing again, at which point the drunken Wang drove his car into the rival group, police said. Chuang was knocked down by the car and Wang then allegedly reversed his car over her and killed her. Police said Wang was pulled from the car by Chuang’s friends and beaten up before officers arrived and arrested him.
BUSINESS
Orchid fair gears up
Orchid growers are gearing up ahead of an annual trade fair held in Tainan that opens later this week, which has become an event foreign buyers do not want to miss, said Lee Tsang-yu (李蒼裕), an advisor to the Taiwan Orchid Growers Association. The Taiwan International Orchid Show has established itself as a key industry event, as important as the Japan Grand Prix International Orchid Festival and the World Orchid Conference, Lee said. More than 3,000 foreign visitors and buyers took part in the fair last year, which reported orders worth NT$7 billion (US$236.89 million) during the event, the association said. This year’s show will be held from Friday to March 12.
EDUCATION
HK school fair wraps up
A two-day higher education fair concluded in Taipei and Kaohsiung yesterday with top-ranked universities from Hong Kong offering handsome scholarship packages to attract Taiwanese students. The University of Hong Kong and the City University of Hong Kong were among about 37 universities and colleges from home and abroad that took part in the event, ahead of the university admission process that begins in March. The University of Hong Kong, ranked 22nd in the world and top in both Hong Kong and Asia in the QS World University Rankings last year, said it hoped to recruit 60 Taiwanese students this year, adding that students with a scholastic aptitude score of between 65 and 75 are eligible to apply for a partial or a full scholarship worth up to NT$2.4 million (US$81,000) over four years. Meanwhile, City University of Hong Kong, which ranks 110th in the world in QS World University Rankings last year, said it was offering students full scholarships worth NT$2.2 million.
THE HAWAII FACTOR: While a 1965 opinion said an attack on Hawaii would not trigger Article 5, the text of the treaty suggests the state is covered, the report says NATO could be drawn into a conflict in the Taiwan Strait if Chinese forces attacked the US mainland or Hawaii, a NATO Defense College report published on Monday says. The report, written by James Lee, an assistant research fellow at Academia Sinica’s Institute of European and American Studies, states that under certain conditions a Taiwan contingency could trigger Article 5 of NATO, under which an attack against any member of the alliance is considered an attack against all members, necessitating a response. Article 6 of the North Atlantic Treaty specifies that an armed attack in the territory of any member in Europe,
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
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
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: