■ CRIME
Former officials impeached
The Control Yuan yesterday impeached four former Miaoli District Court officials for misconduct. The four are accused of entertaining informers involved in cases under investigation and employing the services of female escorts in March 2006. Control Yuan member Cheng Jen-hung (程仁宏) said their behavior had deeply harmed the image of the judiciary and the Control Yuan considered their alleged actions major violations of the Civil Servants Work Act (公務人員服務法). Cheng said the Control Yuan would refer former prosecutors Tai Jui-chi (戴瑞麒) and Liao Chi-tsun (廖啟村), former judicial police chief Tsai Chia-hung (蔡佳宏) and former judicial police Tseng Te-yuan (曾德淵) to the Commission on the Disciplinary Sanctions of Functionaries for punishment.
■ CRIME
Gullible girls arrested
Two high school girls were arrested for shoplifting yesterday after falling for an Internet rumor that blackening the barcodes of products could fool security systems, a television report said. The teenagers were caught red-handed at a cosmetics shop in Taichung, TVBS reported. The girls tried to walk away with NT$8,000 worth of cosmetics and skin-care products. They had blackened the barcodes with marker pens, thinking this would avoid triggering the electronic sensors at the shop’s door as had been claimed in Internet chat rooms, the TV report said. “They set off the alarm when they stepped out of the shop. One panicked girl rushed to the street while the other ran inside the shop, only to be caught by the shopkeepers,” TVBS quoted a police officer as saying.
■ SOCIETY
Adoption encouraged
The Child Welfare League Foundation yesterday urged people to adopt abandoned children.The foundation’s spokesman said that some parents abandon their children because of financial problems, some because the children were suffering from serious diseases and others because they are in prison and cannot look after their children. However, recent government statistics show that the number of local families willing to adopt children had dwindled over the past few years, the spokesman said. A sluggish economy is one of the main reasons behind the drop in the number of families willing to adopt children, the spokesman said. To make matters worse, some families that have adopted children plan to give up the children because of financial woes, he said. The spokesman also called on the public to donate money to help fund the foundation’s child adoption program.
■ CULTURE
Chiayi to host art works
The National Palace Museum will hold a special exhibition from next Friday to Jan. 4 to herald the establishment of the museum’s branch in Chiayi County, which is scheduled to be completed in 2011. The exhibition, titled “Exploring Asia: Episode One of the National Palace Museum’s Southern Branch,” will be held at the Chiayi Performing Arts Center. It will display 117 items featuring six themes — Buddhist sculptures, Asian scriptures, fabrics and textiles in Asia, blue and white porcelain from Asia, Asian tea cultures and traditions, and Western trends in Asian culture. The exhibition is intended to help visitors understand the patterns of cultural transmission, dissemination and evolution in Asia. It will be the first of a series of thematic presentations by the museum in the lead-up to the launch of the Chiayi branch, said Fung Ming-chu (馮明珠), deputy director of the museum.
Costa Rica sent a group of intelligence officials to Taiwan for a short-term training program, the first time the Central American country has done so since the countries ended official diplomatic relations in 2007, a Costa Rican media outlet reported last week. Five officials from the Costa Rican Directorate of Intelligence and Security last month spent 23 days in Taipei undergoing a series of training sessions focused on national security, La Nacion reported on Friday, quoting unnamed sources. The Costa Rican government has not confirmed the report. The Chinese embassy in Costa Rica protested the news, saying in a statement issued the same
Taiwan’s Liu Ming-i, right, who also goes by the name Ray Liu, poses with a Chinese Taipei flag after winning the gold medal in the men’s physique 170cm competition at the International Fitness and Bodybuilding Federation Asian Championship in Ajman, United Arab Emirates, yesterday.
A year-long renovation of Taipei’s Bangka Park (艋舺公園) began yesterday, as city workers fenced off the site and cleared out belongings left by homeless residents who had been living there. Despite protests from displaced residents, a city official defended the government’s relocation efforts, saying transitional housing has been offered. The renovation of the park in Taipei’s Wanhua District (萬華), near Longshan Temple (龍山寺), began at 9am yesterday, as about 20 homeless people packed their belongings and left after being asked to move by city personnel. Among them was a 90-year-old woman surnamed Wang (王), who last week said that she had no plans
TO BE APPEALED: The environment ministry said coal reduction goals had to be reached within two months, which was against the principle of legitimate expectation The Taipei High Administrative Court on Thursday ruled in favor of the Taichung Environmental Protection Bureau in its administrative litigation against the Ministry of Environment for the rescission of a NT$18 million fine (US$609,570) imposed by the bureau on the Taichung Power Plant in 2019 for alleged excess coal power generation. The bureau in November 2019 revised what it said was a “slip of the pen” in the text of the operating permit granted to the plant — which is run by Taiwan Power Co (Taipower) — in October 2017. The permit originally read: “reduce coal use by 40 percent from Jan.
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