A court in China yesterday sentenced 29 Taiwanese to prison for participating in a telecom fraud ring based in Armenia.
The suspects were sentenced by the Huadu District People’s Court in Guangzhou, the Guangdong Province Higher People’s Court said in a statement.
Ringleaders Chen Chun-chih (陳俊志) and Lin Tsung-ju (林宗儒) received jail terms of 10 to 11 years, while the rest were given terms of three to 10 years, the statement said.
The group posed as Chinese court officials to trick Chinese nationals into transferring money to the ring, it said.
The ring made about 1.66 million yuan (US$259,748) from July to August 2016, it added.
The statement did not mention whether an appeal had been filed.
The Taiwanese were part of a group of 129 fraud suspects arrested by Armenian police and sent to Guangzhou on Sept. 2, 2016, despite protests by the Taiwanese government, which insisted that they should be repatriated to Taiwan.
It was later determined that 78 members of the group are Taiwanese.
Tropical Storm Nari is not a threat to Taiwan, based on its positioning and trajectory, the Central Weather Administration (CWA) said yesterday. Nari has strengthened from a tropical depression that was positioned south of Japan, it said. The eye of the storm is about 2,100km east of Taipei, with a north-northeast trajectory moving toward the eastern seaboard of Japan, CWA data showed. Based on its current path, the storm would not affect Taiwan, the agency said.
The Taipei Department of Health’s latest inspection of fresh fruit and vegetables sold in local markets revealed a 25 percent failure rate, with most contraventions involving excessive pesticide residues, while two durians were also found to contain heavy metal cadmium at levels exceeding safety limits. Health Food and Drug Division Director Lin Kuan-chen (林冠蓁) yesterday said the agency routinely conducts inspections of fresh produce sold at traditional markets, supermarkets, hypermarkets, retail outlets and restaurants, testing for pesticide residues and other harmful substances. In its most recent inspection, conducted in May, the department randomly collected 52 samples from various locations, with testing showing
Taipei and other northern cities are to host air-raid drills from 1:30pm to 2pm tomorrow as part of urban resilience drills held alongside the Han Kuang exercises, Taiwan’s largest annual military exercises. Taipei, New Taipei City, Keelung, Taoyuan, Yilan County, Hsinchu City and Hsinchu County are to hold the annual Wanan air defense exercise tomorrow, following similar drills held in central and southern Taiwan yesterday and today respectively. The Taipei Mass Rapid Transit (MRT) and Maokong Gondola are to run as usual, although stations and passenger parking lots would have an “entry only, no exit” policy once air raid sirens sound, Taipei
The government should improve children’s outdoor spaces and accelerate carbon reduction programs, as the risk of heat-related injury due to high summer temperatures rises each year, Greenpeace told a news conference yesterday. Greenpeace examined summer temperatures in Taipei, New Taipei City, Taoyuan, Hsinchu City, Taichung, Tainan and Kaohsiung to determine the effects of high temperatures and climate change on children’s outdoor activities, citing data garnered by China Medical University, which defines a wet-bulb globe temperature (WBGT) of 29°C or higher as posing the risk of heat-related injury. According to the Central Weather Administration, WBGT, commonly referred to as the heat index, estimates