■ 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.
GREAT POWER COMPETITION: Beijing views its military cooperation with Russia as a means to push back against the joint power of the US and its allies, an expert said A recent Sino-Russian joint air patrol conducted over the waters off Alaska was designed to counter the US military in the Pacific and demonstrated improved interoperability between Beijing’s and Moscow’s forces, a national security expert said. National Defense University associate professor Chen Yu-chen (陳育正) made the comment in an article published on Wednesday on the Web site of the Journal of the Chinese Communist Studies Institute. China and Russia sent four strategic bombers to patrol the waters of the northern Pacific and Bering Strait near Alaska in late June, one month after the two nations sent a combined flotilla of four warships
THE TOUR: Pope Francis has gone on a 12-day visit to Indonesia, Papua New Guinea, East Timor and Singapore. He was also invited to Taiwan The government yesterday welcomed Pope Francis to the Asia-Pacific region and said it would continue extending an invitation for him to visit Taiwan. The Ministry of Foreign Affairs made the remarks as Pope Francis began a 12-day tour of the Asia-Pacific on Monday. He is to travel about 33,000km by air to visit Indonesia, Papua New Guinea, East Timor and Singapore, and would arrive back in Rome on Friday next week. It would be the longest and most challenging trip of Francis’ 11-year papacy. The 87-year-old has had health issues over the past few years and now uses a wheelchair. The ministry said
TAIWANESE INNOVATION: The ‘Seawool’ fabric generates about NT$200m a year, with the bulk of it sourced by clothing brands operating in Europe and the US Growing up on Taiwan’s west coast where mollusk farming is popular, Eddie Wang saw discarded oyster shells transformed from waste to function — a memory that inspired him to create a unique and environmentally friendly fabric called “Seawool.” Wang remembered that residents of his seaside hometown of Yunlin County used discarded oyster shells that littered the streets during the harvest as insulation for their homes. “They burned the shells and painted the residue on the walls. The houses then became warm in the winter and cool in the summer,” the 42-year-old said at his factory in Tainan. “So I was
‘LEADERS’: The report highlighted C.C. Wei’s management at TSMC, Lisa Su’s decisionmaking at AMD and the ‘rock star’ status of Nvidia’s Huang Time magazine on Thursday announced its list of the 100 most influential people in artificial intelligence (AI), which included Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC) chairman and chief executive officer C.C. Wei (魏哲家), Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang (黃仁勳) and AMD chair and CEO Lisa Su (蘇姿丰). The list is divided into four categories: Leaders, Innovators, Shapers and Thinkers. Wei and Huang were named in the Leaders category. Other notable figures in the Leaders category included Google CEO Sundar Pichai, Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella, OpenAI CEO Sam Altman and Meta CEO and Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg. Su was listed in the Innovators category. Time highlighted Wei’s
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