Authorities in central Taiwan yesterday fined three people for breaching their home quarantine.
Police in Changhua County’s Yuanlin City (員林) questioned a man, surnamed Chen (陳), and his wife, surnamed Hsieh (謝), for contravening their 14-day home quarantine after returning from Europe.
Police said they were tipped off by residents, who saw the couple outdoors. With the help of street surveillance cameras, they were able track the duo down. They found that Chen had driven a car to work, while Hsieh said she went out to buy medical supplies at a drugstore.
“The couple returned to Taiwan from Europe the previous week and, as ordered by health authorities, they were to stay home for 14 days to prevent the spread of the Wuhan virus,” Yuanlin Police Precinct Chief Hung Wen-hung (洪文宏) told reporters.
Hung said the couple was fined NT$300,000 (US$9,893) each for breaching the Special Act on COVID-19 Prevention, Relief and Recovery (特殊傳染性肺炎防治及紓困振興特別條例規定).
People under quarantine should ask relatives or friends for assistance and delivery of essential goods, he added.
In Chiayi, police caught a quarantine breaker by accident at a traffic stop.
Police noticed a man on a motorcycle while he was waiting for the lights to change because his helmet was not fastened.
They approached the man, surnamed Lee (李), and while checking his identity, found that he had breached his home quarantine after returning from Malaysia.
Lee could be fined up to NT$1 million for breaking quarantine, they said.
In New Taipei City, prosecutors summoned Harry Lee (李來希), head of the Alliance for Monitoring Pension Reform, to appear in court on Monday next week for allegedly spreading misinformation on Facebook.
Harry Lee, known for his vocal opposition to the government’s pension reform measures, had posted a photograph of a fatal accident on March 13 in which a female motorist was killed by a truck on a street in Hsinchu City.
The motorist “was run over and died, because she was going to wait in line to buy medical masks,” Harry Lee wrote on Facebook.
Ministry of Justice officials said that an investigation showed the motorist was killed when she was trying to change to an inside lane because of an illegally parked van.
The incident had nothing to do with lining up to buy masks, they said.
The Criminal Investigation Bureau also received complaints about Harry Lee’s post and after reviewing the evidence, sent him a notice to appear at the bureau to answer questions about the complaint.
After Harry Lee ignored the notice, New Taipei City prosecutors issued a summons for him to appear in court for allegedly spreading misinformation about the pandemic.
Former president Ma Ying-jeou’s (馬英九) mention of Taiwan’s official name during a meeting with Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) on Wednesday was likely a deliberate political play, academics said. “As I see it, it was intentional,” National Chengchi University Graduate Institute of East Asian Studies professor Wang Hsin-hsien (王信賢) said of Ma’s initial use of the “Republic of China” (ROC) to refer to the wider concept of “the Chinese nation.” Ma quickly corrected himself, and his office later described his use of the two similar-sounding yet politically distinct terms as “purely a gaffe.” Given Ma was reading from a script, the supposed slipup
Former Czech Republic-based Taiwanese researcher Cheng Yu-chin (鄭宇欽) has been sentenced to seven years in prison on espionage-related charges, China’s Ministry of State Security announced yesterday. China said Cheng was a spy for Taiwan who “masqueraded as a professor” and that he was previously an assistant to former Cabinet secretary-general Cho Jung-tai (卓榮泰). President-elect William Lai (賴清德) on Wednesday last week announced Cho would be his premier when Lai is inaugurated next month. Today is China’s “National Security Education Day.” The Chinese ministry yesterday released a video online showing arrests over the past 10 years of people alleged to be
THE HAWAII FACTOR: While a 1965 opinion said an attack on Hawaii would not trigger Article 5, the text of the treaty suggests the state is covered, the report says NATO could be drawn into a conflict in the Taiwan Strait if Chinese forces attacked the US mainland or Hawaii, a NATO Defense College report published on Monday says. The report, written by James Lee, an assistant research fellow at Academia Sinica’s Institute of European and American Studies, states that under certain conditions a Taiwan contingency could trigger Article 5 of NATO, under which an attack against any member of the alliance is considered an attack against all members, necessitating a response. Article 6 of the North Atlantic Treaty specifies that an armed attack in the territory of any member in Europe,
The bodies of two individuals were recovered and three additional bodies were discovered on the Shakadang Trail (砂卡礑) in Taroko National Park, eight days after the devastating earthquake in Hualien County, search-and-rescue personnel said. The rescuers reported that they retrieved the bodies of a man and a girl, suspected to be the father and daughter from the Yu (游) family, 500m from the entrance of the trail on Wednesday. The rescue team added that despite the discovery of the two bodies on Friday last week, they had been unable to retrieve them until Wednesday due to the heavy equipment needed to lift