Police raided a gigolo training center in Panchiao and arrested nine of the school's operators for overcharging students, officials said yesterday. \nThe operators allegedly inflated tuition bills by adding in expensive clothes and mobile phones, police officer Liu Tai-shun said. They were also accused of having links to organized crime, Liu said. \nClasses were held in an apartment building in Panchiao, Liu said. \nDuring the raid on Wednesday night, police officers seized fancy clothes, earrings and lecture notes as evidence, officers said. \nThe school's operators ran classified ads offering ``well-paid moonlighting jobs'' and collected up to NT$200,000 for several weeks of training courses, police said. \n"The ads had good results. The school received more than 200 applications in just two weeks," Liu said. \nMen can legally work as hosts in bars and clubs, but it's illegal to solicit sex from customers. \nA local newspaper reported that the school gave lectures on eloquence, posture, dancing and popular games played at gigolo bars for the potential "male public relations workers," a Taiwanese term for gigolos. \n"They were also lectured on taboos at the bars, such as wearing white socks, smoking while walking or walking across the dance floor," it said.
A video allegedly featuring retired general Kao An-kuo (高安國) calling on Taiwanese military officers to surrender to China and overthrow the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) government has sparked outrage and calls for him to be charged with treason. The video, titled “A message to Taiwanese military officers,” allegedly shows Kao saying: “I call on commanding officers of our military troops to stand up for Chinese nationalism, to take up this duty under heaven’s mandate to save Taiwanese from oppression and terrible suffering.” Dressed in military fatigues and a beret, the lieutenant general called on officers to overthrow the “fraudulent DPP regime,”
HASTY REVIEW CLAIMS: Medigen’s vaccine, which is to start phase 3 clinical trials later this year, should not have received emergency use authorization, Hau said Former Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) vice chairman Hau Lung-bin (郝龍斌) is to appeal the Food and Drug Administration’s (FDA) authorization of Medigen Vaccine Biologics’ COVID-19 vaccine, he said yesterday. The administration on July 19 granted Medigen emergency use authorization, even though the drugmaker had not yet completed phase 3 clinical trials. The government should not authorize the use of a vaccine that has not completed phase 3 trials, Hau said in Taipei on the sidelines of an event to distribute boxed meals with former president Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九) and Broadcasting Corp of China chairman Jaw Shaw-kong (趙少康). Hau said the government had politicized
WORTH SOLVING: As 70% of water for public use comes from reservoirs, eutrophication is increasingly placing a strain on water filtration systems, an NTU professor said Most of the 26 reservoirs on Taiwan’s outlying islands are affected by eutrophication, while five out of the 20 category-one reservoirs on Taiwan proper are also affected by eutrophication, an Environmental Protection Administration (EPA) report showed. Eutrophication is caused by an excess of nutrients, which results in a buildup of plant life that prevents light and oxygen from entering the water. In April, the Mingde (明德), Baihe (白河), Jingmian (鏡面), Chengcing Lake (澄清湖) and Fengshan (鳳山) reservoirs were the five category-one reservoirs with the most eutrophication, the report said. The Fengshan reservoir scored 70 on Carlson’s trophic state index, the highest out of
NEW NUMBERS: No deaths were reported yesterday, but there were 12 local cases and two imported cases — people who had returned from Thailand and the US The Central Epidemic Command Center (CECC) yesterday said that COVID-19 restrictions are expected to remain in place after Monday next week, as it reported 12 local infections and two imported cases. Minister of Health and Welfare Chen Shih-chung (陳時中), who heads the center, said the 12 local cases are 10 men and two women aged 10 to 80 who began experiencing symptoms between Thursday and Saturday. Six tested positive during isolation or upon ending it, he said, adding that the sources of infection have been identified in nine cases, while three remain unclear and would be investigated. Taoyuan reported five cases, all family
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