CRIME
Six indicted in MTK case
Six people, including a former MediaTek Inc executive, were yesterday indicted for insider trading linked to a plan by the integrated circuit designer to acquire smaller rival MStar Semiconductor Inc in 2012. Given that all six defendants have voluntarily surrendered their allegedly illicit gains, prosecutors are asking that they be given lenient sentences. Lu Hsiang-cheng (呂向正), former head of MediaTek’s China operations, is accused of buying 50,000 MStar shares before the merger plan was made public on June 22, 2012, according to the indictment issued by the Taipei District Prosecutors’ Office. Also indicted were four MStar employees and one of their family members. The five, who allegedly made between NT$10,000 and NT$5.41 million from similar transactions, were identified as secretary to the chairman Huang Yu-chi (黃郁琪) and her husband, Lee Chia-hsin (李家昕); senior marketing manager Jen Li-huan (任立寰); and engineers Lan Chi-han (藍祺漢) and Wang Ching-wen (王靖雯).
WEATHER
Cold front brings snow
Snow has blanketed some of the nation’s major peaks as a cold front combined with high moisture levels rolls across the country, the Central Weather Bureau said yesterday. Yushan (玉山), Hehuanshan (合歡山), Alishan (阿里山) and Taipingshan (太平山) received snow overnight. About 14cm of snow accumulated on Yushan between 8pm on Wednesday and 5am yesterday, the bureau said, adding that the peak also saw its lowest temperature this winter at minus-11.8oC. The cold front also saw 30cm of snow accumulate on Hehuanshan, marking the biggest snowfall on the peak since late last year, the bureau said. The chances of further snowfall may be reduced as moisture in the air decreases, forecasters said.
DIPLOMACY
The Gambia repaying debt
The Gambia has continued repayment of outstanding loans extended by Taiwan since the two countries severed diplomatic ties in November, a Ministry of Foreign Affairs official said yesterday. The West African country has not defaulted on its debts, Department of West Asian and African Affairs Director-General David Wang (王建業) said in response to inquires at a press conference. The government formally broke relations with The Gambia on Nov. 18 last year, after the African country unilaterally announced that it was severing official ties with Taipei on Nov. 14. The Gambia owed about US$10 million in outstanding loans. It has made three payments totaling US$2.2 million, a ministry official said.
SOCIETY
Farms planned for stadium
The Taipei City Government is turning parts of the Zhongshan Soccer Stadium into a leisure farm to promote urban microfarming and will encourage city residents to “adopt” potted vegetables and fruit that will be grown there beginning in April, program organizers said yesterday. The initiative, which has yet to be finalized, is aimed at encouraging residents to grow their own food to raise community and environmental awareness, the Taipei Expo Foundation said. The program will allow the public to grow a variety of plants across 4,000m2, the foundation said, adding that the selection ranges from strawberries and crown daisies to lettuce and tomatoes. The farm will invite 100 families for a vegetable-growing activity on Saturday. A registration form can be downloaded from the park’s Web site and e-mailed to 6671@cpc.tw.
DIPLOMACY
Australian praises Yunlin
Australian Office Taipei Deputy Representative Martin Walsh on Wednesday visited the Yunlin County Agriculture Expo and said that he recognized the county government’s efforts to create a safe and friendly environment for farmers. As part of the exchanges between Taiwan and Australia, Walsh said, he would like to share Yunlin’s experience with other foreign friends and spread the expo’s concept of sustainable and healthy agriculture. A delegation from the Hsinchu County Government and several activist groups also visited the expo on Wednesday. The three-month-long expo is being held in Huwei Township (虎尾) and showcases organic farming. It runs through March 25.
CULTURE
Cloud Gate begins tour
Cloud Gate Dance Theatre (雲門舞集) tonight opens a three-nation tour with a performance at Sadler’s Wells Theatre in London. The company will perform artistic director and choreographer Lin Hwai-min’s (林懷民) classic Nine Songs (九歌) for the first time at Sadler’s Wells over the weekend, before giving the European premiere of Lin’s latest production, Rice (稻禾), on Wednesday and Thursday. Rice, created to mark the dance company’s 40th anniversary, had its world premiere at the National Theater in Taipei in November last year. From London, the company is to travel to Portland, Oregon, to begin an eight-city tour of the US and Canada, where it is to perform Song of the Wanderers (流浪漢之歌). After the troupe’s final US performance in Houston, Texas, on April 5, it is to return home for a short break before going to Germany for shows of Rice in Dresden at the end of April and Wanderers in Wiesbaden in the first week of May.
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
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
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