Capital Bus Co would compensate or offer settlements to victims of an accident that occurred in the Hsuehshan Tunnel on Monday, company general manager Lee Chien-wen (李建文) said yesterday.
The company would also cooperate with police in their investigation into the cause of the accident and take responsibility for any criminal liability involved, Lee said.
The company’s bus collided with a car on Monday in the 12.9km tunnel connecting Taipei City and Yilan County, triggering a serious fire that claimed two lives and left more than 30 people injured, including 22 that were hospitalized.
The accident occurred after a truck in the slow lane of the two-lane southbound tunnel blew a tire and slowed suddenly. Two cars and a Kamalan Bus Inc bus tried to swerve into the fast lane to avoid hitting the truck. The car behind the Kamalan bus also slowed and was rear-ended by a bus owned by Capital Bus.
Surveillance footage of the accident showed that the bus did not slow down before ramming into the small car, which triggered a fire that killed the two people in the car.
Lee, who earlier yesterday visited the seven injured victims who remain hospitalized in Saint Mary’s Hospital in Luodong Township (羅東), Yilan County, and National Yang-Ming University Hospital in Yilan City, said Capital Bus would improve emergency drills for drivers and ensure that road safety regulations are met.
Former president Ma Ying-jeou’s (馬英九) mention of Taiwan’s official name during a meeting with Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) on Wednesday was likely a deliberate political play, academics said. “As I see it, it was intentional,” National Chengchi University Graduate Institute of East Asian Studies professor Wang Hsin-hsien (王信賢) said of Ma’s initial use of the “Republic of China” (ROC) to refer to the wider concept of “the Chinese nation.” Ma quickly corrected himself, and his office later described his use of the two similar-sounding yet politically distinct terms as “purely a gaffe.” Given Ma was reading from a script, the supposed slipup
Former Czech Republic-based Taiwanese researcher Cheng Yu-chin (鄭宇欽) has been sentenced to seven years in prison on espionage-related charges, China’s Ministry of State Security announced yesterday. China said Cheng was a spy for Taiwan who “masqueraded as a professor” and that he was previously an assistant to former Cabinet secretary-general Cho Jung-tai (卓榮泰). President-elect William Lai (賴清德) on Wednesday last week announced Cho would be his premier when Lai is inaugurated next month. Today is China’s “National Security Education Day.” The Chinese ministry yesterday released a video online showing arrests over the past 10 years of people alleged to be
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,
The bodies of two individuals were recovered and three additional bodies were discovered on the Shakadang Trail (砂卡礑) in Taroko National Park, eight days after the devastating earthquake in Hualien County, search-and-rescue personnel said. The rescuers reported that they retrieved the bodies of a man and a girl, suspected to be the father and daughter from the Yu (游) family, 500m from the entrance of the trail on Wednesday. The rescue team added that despite the discovery of the two bodies on Friday last week, they had been unable to retrieve them until Wednesday due to the heavy equipment needed to lift