■ CRIME
Tung Chia-ching released
The Taipei District Court yesterday extended the detention of Eastern Multimedia Group (EMG) chairman Gary Wang (王令麟) for another two months, but released EMG chief financial officer Tung Chia-ching (童家慶) on NT$6 million (US$193,548) bail. Wang and members of his family are suspected of embezzling NT$41.2 billion from EMG and the Rebar Asia Pacific Group. The prosecutors who indicted Wang recommended a 28-year sentence and a fine of NT$1 billion. Wang has been detained since June. Tung, who was indicted in the same case, faces a sentence of 16 years. He is barred from leaving the country or moving house and must report to his local police station every day.
■ POLITICS
Tibetans plan march
Tibetans and sympathetic groups, including the Taiwan-Tibet Exchange Foundation and the Taiwan Friends of Tibet, plan to hold a parade in Taipei tomorrow to mark the 49th anniversary of the Tibetan Uprising -- when Tibetans took to the streets of Lhasa on March 10, 1959, to protest Chinese occupation. Tens of thousands of Tibetans were massacred by the Chinese army in the months following the uprising, while the Dalai Lama and between 70,000 and 80,000 Tibetans escaped across the Himalayas to exile in India. The theme of this year's parade will be condemnation of human rights abuses in China-ruled Tibet, where activists say Tibetans endure torture, arrest, forced prostitution and execution. The event will begin at 1:30pm at the Guangfu S. Road entrance of Sun Yat-sen Memorial Hall.
■ DEFENSE
Search for pilot continues
The air force said yesterday that the pilot of a missing F-16 could have been suffering from spatial disorientation before his jet fighter disappeared from radar screens. "Spatial disorientation can easily occur during a night flight," Yang Feng-sheng (楊鳳生), spokesman for the air force's 401st wing in Hualien, told a media conference yesterday. "When that happens, the pilot will become confused about direction." Major Ting Shih-pao's (丁世寶) F-16 disappeared during a routine night training exercise at approximately 7:16pm on Tuesday. The air force immediately launched a large-scale rescue mission focused on the aircraft's last recorded location. The navy dispatched several minesweepers to participate in the search yesterday. However, no sign of the plane or its pilot has been found. Yang said an initial investigation showed that Ting's F-16 performed an "abnormal" maneuver shortly before it disappeared.
■ TRANSPORT
Line to be electrified
The Railway Reconstruction Bureau said yesterday that it planned to electrify the railway section between Hualien and Taitung, a project which was approved by the Council of Economic Planning and Development last month. Bureau Deputy Director-General Chen Cheng-kai (陳正楷) said the section was about 155km in length and incorporated 30 stations. Currently, the single-track railway is used only by diesel-powered trains. Chen said the electrification of a new double-track railway on this section would allow for trains to operate at 130kph, up from 110kph, and reduce maximum traveling time to 35 minutes. The project has a budget of NT$15 billion (NT$483 million) and is scheduled to be completed within seven years, he said. It will involve the construction of four tunnels and the improvement of three bridges, Chen said.
■ SCIENCE
Physicist gets lofty award
Alex Chao (趙午), a physics professor and deputy head of the Department of Accelerator Research at Stanford University in the US, has been awarded the prestigious European Physical Society 2008 Accelerator Achievement Prize, Academia Sinica said yesterday. The award is conferred by the European Physical Society Accelerator Group, which will bestow the biannual honor on Chao at the European Particle Accelerator Conference in June. Chao, a Taiwan-trained physicist who received his bachelor's degree in physics from National Tsing Hua University in 1970, later studied in the US, where he currently resides. Chao was chosen for the award for his "many ground-breaking and fundamental contributions to accelerator physics and for the direct or indirect contribution to the design and performance of almost every major accelerator project, built or not built, over the past 30 years," the group said.
■ EDUCATION
Dutch scholarship offered
The Delta Foundation is offering NT$1.65 million (US$53,400) this year in scholarships to students who wish to study environmental protection in the Netherlands. Selected students will be offered NT$250,000 for a master's degree or NT$500,000 for a doctorate. Those who wish to apply must have a college degree or above from Taiwan, fluency in English (TOEFL 213 or above; or 5.5 on the IELTS) and a passion for environmental issues. They would also need to submit a 1,000-word essay on how they would utilize the degree to help environmental causes. The application deadline is May 15th.Visit www.neso-taipei.org.tw/Scholarship/Scholarship_Reg.aspx for more information.
An essay competition jointly organized by a local writing society and a publisher affiliated with the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) might have contravened the Act Governing Relations Between the People of the Taiwan Area and the Mainland Area (臺灣地區與大陸地區人民關係條例), the Mainland Affairs Council (MAC) said on Thursday. “In this case, the partner organization is clearly an agency under the CCP’s Fujian Provincial Committee,” MAC Deputy Minister and spokesperson Liang Wen-chieh (梁文傑) said at a news briefing in Taipei. “It also involves bringing Taiwanese students to China with all-expenses-paid arrangements to attend award ceremonies and camps,” Liang said. Those two “characteristics” are typically sufficient
A magnitude 5.9 earthquake that struck about 33km off the coast of Hualien City was the "main shock" in a series of quakes in the area, with aftershocks expected over the next three days, the Central Weather Administration (CWA) said yesterday. Prior to the magnitude 5.9 quake shaking most of Taiwan at 6:53pm yesterday, six other earthquakes stronger than a magnitude of 4, starting with a magnitude 5.5 quake at 6:09pm, occurred in the area. CWA Seismological Center Director Wu Chien-fu (吳健富) confirmed that the quakes were all part of the same series and that the magnitude 5.5 temblor was
The brilliant blue waters, thick foliage and bucolic atmosphere on this seemingly idyllic archipelago deep in the Pacific Ocean belie the key role it now plays in a titanic geopolitical struggle. Palau is again on the front line as China, and the US and its allies prepare their forces in an intensifying contest for control over the Asia-Pacific region. The democratic nation of just 17,000 people hosts US-controlled airstrips and soon-to-be-completed radar installations that the US military describes as “critical” to monitoring vast swathes of water and airspace. It is also a key piece of the second island chain, a string of
The Central Weather Administration has issued a heat alert for southeastern Taiwan, warning of temperatures as high as 36°C today, while alerting some coastal areas of strong winds later in the day. Kaohsiung’s Neimen District (內門) and Pingtung County’s Neipu Township (內埔) are under an orange heat alert, which warns of temperatures as high as 36°C for three consecutive days, the CWA said, citing southwest winds. The heat would also extend to Tainan’s Nansi (楠西) and Yujing (玉井) districts, as well as Pingtung’s Gaoshu (高樹), Yanpu (鹽埔) and Majia (瑪家) townships, it said, forecasting highs of up to 36°C in those areas
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