CRIME
Shooting sentence upheld
The Supreme Court ruled yesterday that a man who opened fire at an election-eve rally, killing one man and injuring Sean Lien (連勝文), the son of former vice president Lien Chan (連戰), must serve a life sentence. The ruling is final. The court confirmed a decision last year by the Taiwan High Court, which convicted Lin Cheng-wei (林正偉), 48, of attempted murder and illegal possession of firearms and sentenced him to life. Lin, who had a criminal record, was arrested at the scene after opening fire at a Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) rally in November 2010 in then-Taipei County. Lin said he intended to shoot a KMT candidate, with whom he had a personal dispute, but that he accidentally shot Sean Lien in the face. Sean Lien has long claimed that he was the real target. Huang Yun-sheng (黃運聖), who was in the crowd, was hit by the same bullet and died on the spot.
CRIME
Harace Lin released on bail
Harace Lin (林鴻明), the former chairman of Taipei Financial Center Corp, was released on NT$100 million (US$3.4 million) bail last night, one day after prosecutors indicted him for allegedly “hollowing out” a listed company, Jin Shang Development, more than a decade ago. The Taipei District Prosecutors Office on Wednesday demanded a prison sentence of 12 years for Lin on charges of violating the Securities and Exchange Act (證券交易法) and the Business Entity Accounting Act (商業會計法), as well as committing forgery and money laundering. Lin allegedly obtained corporate loans of NT$1.8 billion from the now-defunct China United Trust and Investment Corp in 1999 and put up several tracts of land as collateral. He did not repay the loans. China United Trust and Investment Corp then sold the land for NT$1.2 billion to land development companies.
ENERGY
French nuclear expert to visit
The former chairman of France’s independent agency regulating nuclear safety is to visit Taiwan next week to discuss nuclear power issues with local officials, the French representative office in Taiwan said. Andre-Claude Lacoste, who stepped down as Nuclear Safety Authority chairman in November last year, is to meet with Atomic Energy Council officials during his visit from Tuesday through Thursday, the Bureau Francais de Taipei said. He is to attend a forum hosted by the council on Tuesday on the safety of nuclear power and give a talk. titled “New Challenges in Nuclear Safety from a Regulatory Perspective,” at National Taiwan University in Taipei on Wednesday, the bureau said. Lacoste’s visit comes amid increasingly heated debate in recent weeks on whether the Fourth Nuclear Power Plant in Gongliao District (貢寮), New Taipei City (新北市), should begin operations when it is finished.
EDUCATION
NTNU to set up study center
National Taiwan Normal University (NTNU) and Pennsylvania State University yesterday announced the establishment of an international research center to promote Chinese language learning. The Advanced Research Center for the Study of Learning Sciences, which will be set up at NTNU, will be devoted to three major fields — language science, science education and learning technology, university officials said. The research will examine how people recognize and memorize the Chinese language in order to identify those who find it more easy to learn Chinese, as well as to develop “smart classroom” systems that can automatically track students’ learning situations.
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:
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
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
POLICE INVESTIGATING: A man said he quit his job as a nurse at Taipei Tzu Chi Hospital as he had been ‘disgusted’ by the behavior of his colleagues A man yesterday morning wrote online that he had witnessed nurses taking photographs and touching anesthetized patients inappropriately in Taipei Tzu Chi Hospital’s operating theaters. The man surnamed Huang (黃) wrote on the Professional Technology Temple bulletin board that during his six-month stint as a nurse at the hospital, he had seen nurses taking pictures of patients, including of their private parts, after they were anesthetized. Some nurses had also touched patients inappropriately and children were among those photographed, he said. Huang said this “disgusted” him “so much” that “he felt the need to reveal these unethical acts in the operating theater