WEATHER
Plum rains to start Friday
The two-month rainy season in Taiwan will start this year with the arrival of the first plum rains on Friday, the Central Weather Bureau said yesterday. However, compared with previous years, this month may be slightly warmer and drier, while next month is expected to be more humid and cooler, Weather Forecast Center director Cheng Ming-dean (鄭明典) said. During the plum rain season, peculiar to East Asia and thus named because it coincides with the ripening of plums, frontal systems tend to linger over Taiwan, bringing severe thunderstorms and heavy rain for days at a time. This year, the most intense rainfall is expected from late this month to early next month and the chances of torrential rainfall will be especially high next month, Cheng said.
CRIME
Kaohsiung officials convicted
Twenty Greater Kaohsiung city councilors, including the Chinese Nationalist Party’s (KMT) city council speaker Hsu Kun-yuan (許崑源), were found guilty of fraud and forging documents, among other charges yesterday. Hsu was given a one-year sentence, while former Greater Kaohsiung council speaker Chuan Chi-wang (莊啟旺), also of the KMT, was given a five-month sentence by the Kaohsiung District Court. The sentences can be commuted to fines. Hsu, Chuan and several other councilors were found guilty of using the names of other people to set up dummy accounts to apply for wage payments for councilor assistants. Some of those found guilty were members of the Democratic Progressive Party and independents. They were given sentences ranging from two months to one year and ten months. The case came to light in 2007, when Kaohsiung City traffic police units were investigating irregularities of people’s names and addresses on traffic tickets.
Taiwan yesterday condemned the recent increase in Chinese coast guard-escorted fishing vessels operating illegally in waters around the Pratas Islands (Dongsha Islands, 東沙群島) in the South China Sea. Unusually large groupings of Chinese fishing vessels began to appear around the islands on Feb. 15, when at least six motherships and 29 smaller boats were sighted, the Coast Guard Administration (CGA) said in a news release. While CGA vessels were dispatched to expel the Chinese boats, Chinese coast guard ships trespassed into Taiwan’s restricted waters and unsuccessfully attempted to interfere, the CGA said. Due to the provocation, the CGA initiated an operation to increase
A crowd of over 200 people gathered outside the Taipei District Court as two sisters indicted for abusing a 1-year-old boy to death attended a preliminary hearing in the case yesterday afternoon. The crowd held up signs and chanted slogans calling for aggravated penalties in child abuse cases and asking for no bail and “capital punishment.” They also held white flowers in memory of the boy, nicknamed Kai Kai (剴剴), who was allegedly tortured to death by the sisters in December 2023. The boy died four months after being placed in full-time foster care with the
A Taiwanese woman on Sunday was injured by a small piece of masonry that fell from the dome of St Peter’s Basilica in the Vatican during a visit to the church. The tourist, identified as Hsu Yun-chen (許芸禎), was struck on the forehead while she and her tour group were near Michelangelo’s sculpture Pieta. Hsu was rushed to a hospital, the group’s guide to the church, Fu Jing, said yesterday. Hsu was found not to have serious injuries and was able to continue her tour as scheduled, Fu added. Mathew Lee (李世明), Taiwan’s recently retired ambassador to the Holy See, said he met
The Shanlan Express (山嵐號), or “Mountain Mist Express,” is scheduled to launch on April 19 as part of the centennial celebration of the inauguration of the Taitung Line. The tourism express train was renovated from the Taiwan Railway Corp’s EMU500 commuter trains. It has four carriages and a seating capacity of 60 passengers. Lion Travel is arranging railway tours for the express service. Several news outlets were invited to experience the pilot tour on the new express train service, which is to operate between Hualien Railway Station and Chihshang (池上) Railway Station in Taitung County. It would also be the first tourism service
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