A car was hit by falling rocks on the eastern section of the Southern Cross-Island Highway just after midnight yesterday, immediately killing 40-year-old Yang Chien-yi (楊千儀), who suffered severe head wounds.
The 26-year-old driver, Chen Chun-tsai (陳俊才), his 29-year-old brother, Chen Chun-hsiung (陳俊雄), and 28-year-old Hsieh Yao-tse (謝曜澤) were all injured and transported to Tzu-chi Hospital in Kuanshan Township (關山), Taitung County.
Because of the extent of their injuries, the two brothers were transferred to Hualien’s Tzu-chi Hospital for further treatment later yesterday.
Police said the Taitung County fire department received a report of the accident and police from nearby Hsiangyang precinct hurried to the scene, joined later by the fire department. Police from Chishang (池上), Haituan (海端) and Kuanshan townships also sent rescue personnel and ambulances.
When they reached the site of the accident, police said the landslide had made the road slippery and that the car appeared to have been hit by rocks ranging in size from 100kg to 2 tonnes.
Hsieh, who had only suffered an injury to his left hand, had already managed to get out of the car and had helped Chen Chun-hsiung out of the front passenger seat.
Hsieh said he and Yang had been on a photo assignment in Taitung, but got a flat tire. They had then hitched a ride with the two brothers.
Yang, who was sitting in the back seat, was already dead when rescue personnel arrived, police said, and Chen Chin-tsai was trapped in the driver’s seat.
It took rescuers almost an hour to free him from the wreckage.
The two brothers suffered facial injuries and broken legs, police said.
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
‘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
EVERYONE’S ISSUE: Kim said that during a visit to Taiwan, she asked what would happen if China attacked, and was told that the global economy would shut down Taiwan is critical to the global economy, and its defense is a “here and now” issue, US Representative Young Kim said during a roundtable talk on Taiwan-US relations on Friday. Kim, who serves on the US House of Representatives’ Foreign Affairs Committee, held a roundtable talk titled “Global Ties, Local Impact: Why Taiwan Matters for California,” at Santiago Canyon College in Orange County, California. “Despite its small size and long distance from us, Taiwan’s cultural and economic importance is felt across our communities,” Kim said during her opening remarks. Stanford University researcher and lecturer Lanhee Chen (陳仁宜), lawyer Lin Ching-chi
RSS