CRIME
Rapist gets 2,350 years
A man in Yunlin County received multiple sentences totaling 2,350 years for molesting or raping his three daughters 306 times within six years, beginning in 2008. However, the 56-year-old father will only have to serve 30 years in jail, the maximum term of imprisonment allowed under the Criminal Code. The verdict can be appealed. According to the verdict issued by the Yunlin District Court, the man began to molest his eldest daughter when she was nine years old and began to rape her when she was 11. His two other daughters fell victim to his sexual abuse after his wife died in 2012, the verdict said. The case only came to light two years ago after his second daughter told one of her teachers about the situation.
TRAVEL
¥14.58m in cash seized
Customs officers on Friday confiscated ¥14.58 million (US$133,252) from five foreign nationals at the Taiwan Taoyuan International Airport after finding ¥20 million in undeclared cash in their luggage, airport police said. A Chinese man, surnamed Lin (林), 45, and two Japanese women, aged 52 and 59, were found to have hidden ¥6 million, ¥4 million and ¥6 million respectively in their carry-on luggage when going through security checks at Terminal One. Police then found two other Japanese men traveling with them, and an additional ¥4 million in one of the two men’s luggage. Lin said the group planned to carry the money to Okinawa, where they wanted to purchase land. Police returned US$10,000 — the maximum amount of undeclared foreign currency allowed to be taken out of the country — to each of the five and confiscated the rest. Passengers and transport service personnel are required to declare foreign currency of more than US$10,000 or risk confiscation.
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,