■ Crime
3C's founder convicted
Wu Tsann-kuen (吳燦坤), founder and chairman of the Tsann Kuen Enterprise Co (3C, 燦坤實業), was found guilty of violations of the Securities and Exchange Law by the Kaohsiung district court yesterday. He was sentenced to 18 months in prison. His personal assistant, Chuang Hui-fang (莊惠芳), was sentenced to 14 months. The two were found to have willfully manipulated the share price of Sunfar Computers Co (順發電腦) after the company rejected an offer to purchase its shares. According to the judgement, Tsann Kuen Enterprises had approached Sunfar's general manager, Wu Chin-chang (吳錦昌), with an offer to purchase Sunfar shares for NT$20, although they were trading on the market for NT$72. After the offer was rejected, Wu and Chuang manipulated the stock market to force down the price of Sunfar shares.
■ Health
Mental hospitals increase
The number of mental institutions in Taiwan had increased to 339 as of the end of September last year, up 45 from a year earlier, according to a report released yesterday by the Directorate General of Budget, Accounting and Statistics. The government has continued to funnel national resources and offer incentives to encourage the private sector to expand mental hospital wards in order to upgrade facilities for mental patients, the report said. There were a total of 27,000 hospital beds for mental patients as of the end of September, up 7.5 percent over the same period of 2003, it said. The number of mental health workers also increased 4.1 percent to 7,223 people as of the end of September, which included 6,555 full-time workers and 668 part-time workers, it said.
■ Culture
Kaohsiung starts Hakka body
Emphasizing its dedication to multiculturalism, Kaohsiung City Government announced the establishment of its Hakka Affairs Commission yesterday. The head of the committee will be Liao Sung-hsiung (廖松雄), who was originally the department head of the Executive Yuan's Council for Hakka Affairs southern regional office. The establishment of the commis-sion is the next step of the city's dedication to the promotion of Hakka culture, as shown earlier through the establishment of the Kaohsiung City Hakka Culture and Affairs Founda-tion by city mayor Frank Hsieh (謝長廷) in 1999, the city government said yesterday. Kaohsiung City has 250,000 people of Hakka descent.
■ Disaster Relief
DOH to send aid team
The Department of Health (DOH) will send a 17-member team to the Thai island of Phuket today to help with epidemic-prevention work there over the next three months. The DOH noted that one week after lethal tsunami triggered by a magnitude-9.0 earthquake hit Phuket Dec. 26, the need for urgent medical care is no longer there but the specter of an epidemic outbreak is emerging. The team, comprised of epidemic prevention experts and medical personnel, will bring with them 1.5 tons of health and hygiene equipment and medicine, with the focus on public health. The DOH said that in the next three months, they will continue to send personnel to Phuket who will work there on a rotational basis.
Left-Handed Girl (左撇子女孩), a film by Taiwanese director Tsou Shih-ching (鄒時擎) and cowritten by Oscar-winning director Sean Baker, won the Gan Foundation Award for Distribution at the Cannes Critics’ Week on Wednesday. The award, which includes a 20,000 euro (US$22,656) prize, is intended to support the French release of a first or second feature film by a new director. According to Critics’ Week, the prize would go to the film’s French distributor, Le Pacte. "A melodrama full of twists and turns, Left-Handed Girl retraces the daily life of a single mother and her two daughters in Taipei, combining the irresistible charm of
A Philippine official has denied allegations of mistreatment of crew members during Philippine authorities’ boarding of a Taiwanese fishing vessel on Monday. Philippine Bureau of Fisheries and Aquatic Resources (BFAR) spokesman Nazario Briguera on Friday said that BFAR law enforcement officers “observed the proper boarding protocols” when they boarded the Taiwanese vessel Sheng Yu Feng (昇漁豐號) and towed it to Basco Port in the Philippines. Briguera’s comments came a day after the Taiwanese captain of the Sheng Yu Feng, Chen Tsung-tun (陳宗頓), held a news conference in Pingtung County and accused the Philippine authorities of mistreatment during the boarding of
The Chinese Communist Party (CCP) is pushing for residents of Kinmen and Lienchiang counties to acquire Chinese ID cards in a bid to “blur national identities,” a source said. The efforts are part of China’s promotion of a “Kinmen-Xiamen twin-city living sphere, including a cross-strait integration pilot zone in China’s Fujian Province,” the source said. “The CCP is already treating residents of these outlying islands as Chinese citizens. It has also intensified its ‘united front’ efforts and infiltration of those islands,” the source said. “There is increasing evidence of espionage in Kinmen, particularly of Taiwanese military personnel being recruited by the
88.2 PERCENT INCREASE: The variants driving the current outbreak are not causing more severe symptoms, but are ‘more contagious’ than previous variants, an expert said Number of COVID-19 cases in the nation is surging, with the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) describing the ongoing wave of infections as “rapid and intense,” and projecting that the outbreak would continue through the end of July. A total of 19,097 outpatient and emergency visits related to COVID-19 were reported from May 11 to Saturday last week, an 88.2 percent increase from the previous week’s 10,149 visits, CDC data showed. The nearly 90 percent surge in case numbers also marks the sixth consecutive weekly increase, although the total remains below the 23,778 recorded during the same period last year,
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