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.
The Taipei Department of Health yesterday said it has launched a probe into a restaurant at Far Eastern Sogo Xinyi A13 Department Store after a customer died of suspected food poisoning. A preliminary investigation on Sunday found missing employee health status reports and unsanitary kitchen utensils at Polam Kopitiam (寶林茶室) in the department store’s basement food court, the department said. No direct relationship between the food poisoning death and the restaurant was established, as no food from the day of the incident was available for testing and no other customers had reported health complaints, it said, adding that the investigation is ongoing. Later
REVENGE TRAVEL: A surge in ticket prices should ease this year, but inflation would likely keep tickets at a higher price than before the pandemic Scoot is to offer six additional flights between Singapore and Northeast Asia, with all routes transiting Taipei from April 1, as the budget airline continues to resume operations that were paused during the COVID-19 pandemic, a Scoot official said on Thursday. Vice president of sales Lee Yong Sin (李榮新) said at a gathering with reporters in Taipei that the number of flights from Singapore to Japan and South Korea with a stop in Taiwan would increase from 15 to 21 each week. That change means the number of the Singapore-Taiwan-Tokyo flights per week would increase from seven to 12, while Singapore-Taiwan-Seoul
POOR PREPARATION: Cultures can form on food that is out of refrigeration for too long and cooking does not reliably neutralize their toxins, an epidemiologist said Medical professionals yesterday said that suspected food poisoning deaths revolving around a restaurant at Far Eastern Department Store Xinyi A13 Store in Taipei could have been caused by one of several types of bacterium. Ho Mei-shang (何美鄉), an epidemiologist at Academia Sinica’s Institute of Biomedical Sciences, wrote on Facebook that the death of a 39-year-old customer of the restaurant suggests the toxin involved was either “highly potent or present in massive large quantities.” People who ate at the restaurant showed symptoms within hours of consuming the food, suggesting that the poisoning resulted from contamination by a toxin and not infection of the
BAD NEIGHBORS: China took fourth place among countries spreading disinformation, with Hong Kong being used as a hub to spread propaganda, a V-Dem study found Taiwan has been rated as the country most affected by disinformation for the 11th consecutive year in a study by the global research project Varieties of Democracy (V-Dem). The nation continues to be a target of disinformation originating from China, and Hong Kong is increasingly being used as a base from which to disseminate that disinformation, the report said. After Taiwan, Latvia and Palestine ranked second and third respectively, while Nicaragua, North Korea, Venezuela and China, in that order, were the countries that spread the most disinformation, the report said. Each country listed in the report was given a score,